‘Lost your pa in the war, did you, miss?’ Mrs Webster’s voice was full of sympathy.
At Sophie’s brief nod, the landlady let out a deep sigh. ‘Our Jamie was taken, too,’ she said quietly. ‘Just over four years ago, it were—some place in Spain called Badhow or Bardhoff—never could quite get my tongue around the name.’
‘Badajoz,’ responded Sophie, much calmer now. ‘Yes, I know it well. Such a dreadful battle it was, but our soldiers fought so courageously—you must be very proud of your son.’
‘Well, yes. Dare say I am,’ returned the other flatly. ‘But I’d still far rather he’d stayed at home with us!’
The resultant silence that followed this critical observation might well have continued for quite some time had not the return of the landlord, bearing aloft his freshly slaughtered chicken, served to interrupt the mutual melancholia.
‘Biggest one I could get hold of!’ he bragged as, sitting himself down next to his wife, he proceeded to pluck out the bird’s feathers.
Some three hours later, fully replete on double helpings of the hearty chicken and dumpling stew, chased down with a glass or two of Mrs Webster’s highly intoxicating homebrewed ginger wine, the exhausted travellers declared themselves ready for their beds.
Having offered to take a tray up to the Lucan couple, Sophie had found the pair fast asleep, entwined in one another’s arms and, since she did not have the heart to awaken them, she had crept quietly away, judging that a peaceful night’s sleep was likely to be of far more benefit to the expectant mother than a plateful of stew.
A rather more immediate concern, from her own point of view, had been her young companion’s constant sneezing and shivering fits throughout the evening, both of which seemed to indicate the beginnings of something ominous. She could only hope and pray that Lydia had not already succumbed to the dreaded infection from which she had been despatched to remove the youngster!
Luckily, Mrs Webster was able to supply Sophie with a couple of headache powders, but it was not until she had administered one of these to Lydia, tucked a wrapped hot brick at her feet and settled her down for the night, that she was able to turn her mind to her own needs. Having set out from London with the intention of being back in Lennox Gardens before nightfall, she had brought nothing with her apart from the clothes she was wearing! Had she thought of it before her young charge had drifted off to sleep, she might well have considered asking Lydia for the loan of one of her nightdresses, since they were of an almost similar size. As it was, having hung her plain but serviceable grey kerseymere gown over the fireguard, in the hopes that the fire’s heat might remove the worst of its creases, she was obliged to resign herself to sleeping in her flimsy muslin shift.
Although the straw-filled palliasse was not the most comfortable of mattresses, it was impossible not to smile as she had, as she’d told the landlord, known far worse sleeping quarters, and she quickly reminded herself that, had their doughty driver not found them this little jewel of a lodging, they might yet be sitting in the carriage, probably freezing to death in a snowdrift somewhere!
Snuggling under the heavy quilt with which Mrs Webster had insisted upon providing her, she felt her eyelids droop and sleep was all but ready to claim her when a sudden thought flashed through her mind.
Her reticule! Unable to recall exactly where or when she had last set eyes on the little purse that held the sum total of her wealth, she pulled herself up out of her warm cocoon and, with the help of the flickering firelight, began to peruse the various surfaces of the tiny room. In one of the pockets of her pelisse, perhaps? But, no, she remembered having checked both pockets before handing her damp coat over to Mrs Webster to hang up on the ceiling dryer in the kitchen! As panic threatened to overcome her, she forced herself to take a deep breath and concentrate. And then, as sanity prevailed, it all came back to her. She had placed her reticule down on the parlour windowsill before coming upstairs to help Mrs Webster with the bed-making. She found it hard to believe that any of the other passengers would have helped themselves to it, but then, one could never tell these days! So, judging that it would be better to be safe than sorry, she crept over to Lydia’s portmanteau, extracted a large paisley shawl from within and, after thrusting her feet into her half-boots, made her way over to the doorway and peered out into the dimly lit passage beyond.
Chapter Two
Just as she had supposed, the house was completely silent, with every one of its exhausted occupants presumably wrapped in the arms of Morpheus! Tiptoeing swiftly down the single flight of stairs, with only the light from one wall sconce to guide her, she made at once for the parlour. Finding the door shut, she turned the knob gently, unwilling to risk waking either of her hosts who, as she had recently ascertained, slept in the room directly opposite to this one. As she stepped inside, her boot immediately encountered a creaking floorboard, causing her to freeze in her tracks, but then, by the light of the still glowing logs in the fireplace, she spotted her reticule, lying just as she had left it upon the windowsill. Her courage returned and, making a quick dash across the room, she reached out her hand to snatch up the precious object.
‘Well, well, well! And what have we here? A cosy little armful come to keep me company, eh? How very accommodating!’
At the unexpected sound of the drawling male voice, Sophie spun round in dismay—only to find herself almost face-to-face with its advancing owner who, as she was soon to discover, seemed bent on relieving her of her shawl. Clutching the totally inadequate covering more tightly about her person, she attempted to back away towards the door.
‘Not so fast, my pretty one!’ came the stranger’s purring undertone, as his hand shot out to catch hold of the shawl’s trailing end. Then, with one swift jerk, he yanked it from her shoulders, to leave her cowering before him clad only in her flimsy shift.
‘You clearly came with the sole purpose of entertaining me in my hour of need, my sweet, so let’s waste no more time on this feeble pretence at maidenly modesty, I implore you!’
And then, before the utterly transfixed Sophie even had time to speculate upon what his intentions might be, the man had stepped forward, pulled her into his arms and, after tipping her head back, set about capturing her lips with his own!
Her initial sense of stunned outrage was almost overwhelmed as an inexplicable trickle of excitement ran up and down her spine, and for countless seconds she found herself seized by the wildest of temptations to simply allow these confusing emotions to run away with her. It was not until one of the stranger’s hands slid down her back to cup the softly rounded cheeks of her buttocks that her misplaced wits suddenly leapt into action and, with a swift wrench, she succeeded in tearing herself away from what was becoming an increasingly enthusiastic onslaught on her person.
Breathless with disbelief, she tried to haul herself out of his reach, but he was too quick for her, his hand shooting out and capturing her wrist.
‘Let me go!’ she panted. ‘Please, let me go, sir. I beg of you!’
A puzzled frown puckered the man’s brow, and as the sound of Sophie’s voice gradually penetrated his perception a sudden stillness came over him. No serving wench this, as the girl’s cultured tones instantly informed him! With a strangled oath he dropped his hold and, stepping hurriedly away from her, held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘My mistake, ma’am,’ he grated, as he lurched back to sink into the fireside chair that he had so eagerly vacated at Sophie’s unexpected entrance. ‘I fear that I seem to have partaken of—’
But Sophie, seizing her chance, was in no mind to wait to hear whatever explanation her attacker was about to drum up to excuse his extraordinary behaviour. Snatching up the discarded shawl, she dashed towards the door and, dragging it open, fled along the passageway and up the stairs as if all the devils in hell were at her heels!
Raising his head just in time to catch sight of her shapely calves and trim ankles disappearing from his view, Marcus Wolfe, Viscoun
t Helstone, let out a self-deprecating groan. Well aware that it had been sheer madness on his part to have set out from Bradfield on such a night, he could not help but feel that he had been well served for his inanity. Whilst it was true that another hour spent in his father’s company might well have driven him into doing or saying something that he was sure to have later regretted, he was not so foxed that he was unable to recognise the possible bumblebath into which he had landed himself, with his attempted seduction of a female who, rather than having been a serving girl eager to earn herself a few shillings in return for services rendered, as he had originally supposed, had turned out to be one of the inn’s benighted coach party passengers!
Not that he was especially worried about any consequences that might arise as a result of that rather unproductive foray—past experience had taught him that the passing over of a thick wad of notes was usually more than enough to silence the complaints of even the most devoted of husbands and fathers! He shrugged. In any case, life was too short to allow such petty irrelevances to overset him! Not for nothing had his closest associates designated the Viscount with the soubriquet Hellcat!
Tossing back the final dregs of the bottle of rather inferior brandy with which the landlord had provided him—presumably as some sort of sop for failing to accommodate him with sleeping quarters more appropriate to his position—Marcus sprawled back in his chair with a low growl of discontent. Far from being too short, his life, as far as he was concerned, was well on the way to being too damned long and a sight too dreary for words! Small wonder that his father had termed him a worthless wastrel, much preferring the company of Giles, the younger of the two Wolfe scions. Giles the brave—Giles the hero—good old never-put-a-foot-wrong Giles!
Good grief! What in God’s name had got into him that he had actually sunk to reviling his beloved brother, a man whom he loved and respected with every fibre of his being!
As he stared down into the fire’s dying embers, Marcus’s shoulders slumped in a fit of self-revulsion. It seemed as if the endless round of drinking, gambling and whoring of which his life consisted was finally beginning to affect his reason. It was beyond question that Giles, who for the past six years and more had fought his way across two continents, surviving countless bloody battles to emerge virtually unscathed as a highly decorated war hero, deserved every bit of praise and admiration that could be heaped upon his twenty-seven-year-old shoulders.
It was not that Marcus begrudged his brother even a single one of that young man’s well deserved accreditations. His abiding feeling was simply one of envy, laced with a generous helping of resentment—a deep and bitter resentment at having been born the elder of their father’s two sons, thus precluding him from opting for the much desired military career that his younger brother had been allowed to pursue. Whilst it was true that a good many members of the nobility had been seen to encourage their eldest sons to join in the campaign to rid the civilised world of Napoleon’s tyranny, it had been as a direct result of the loss of so many of those promising young lives that Marcus’s father, the Earl of Bradfield, fearing the possibility of losing both his heirs, had flatly refused to countenance his elder son purchasing the commission on which the Viscount had set his heart.
The badly thwarted Marcus, having pointed out that there was more than one way that a fellow might choose to sacrifice his life, had then proceeded to demonstrate several of them, thoroughly outraging his father by occupying his hours with every possible degeneracy known to man.
In direct contravention of the Earl’s wishes, Marcus appeared to have gone out of his way to dice with death and had, in the past eight or so years, been obliged to turn up to defend his name in dawn encounters on more than one occasion. Although he had, as yet, never actually killed a man—his aim being so impeccable that a harmless nick in an opponent’s upper arm or shoulder had proved more than enough to decide the day.
Whilst he could, if he so chose, drink most of his friends and colleagues under the proverbial table, he had for the most part learned to hold his liquor, preferring to keep a sober head both for his card-playing and for other, more pleasurable activities. For, although he kept two mistresses in comfort in different parts of Town, he did not feel that such arrangements necessarily prohibited him from taking advantage of the many other casual liaisons that offered themselves up to him—a goodly proportion of the females in the upper echelons of the society in which the Viscount moved had proved to be remarkably lax in regard to the marital vows they had taken, hence those somewhat frequent dawn encounters! And, had his skill at cards not been so amazingly superior to that of his opponents, Marcus might well have lost the fortune he had inherited from his maternal grandmother, thereby obliging him to depend upon hand-outs from his father—a situation to be avoided at all costs, as far as Helstone was concerned.
As it was, he could not help but be aware that he was in grave danger of becoming not only an out-and-out rakeshame but also the ‘worthless wastrel’ his father had termed him earlier that evening—an epithet that did not sit too readily on Helstone’s shoulders and one that had caused him to quit the family mansion in a towering fury.
Having finally managed to stumble, half-dead with cold, into this tiny wayside tavern on the Reading post road, only to discover that all its rooms were already occupied, he had been obliged to try and make himself comfortable on one of the most uncomfortable of fireside chairs that he had ever encountered, but with his boots off, a roaring fire at his feet and a half bottle of brandy at his disposal, he had been quite prepared to make the best of it, reasoning that by morning the snow would more than likely have disappeared and he would be back on his way to his Grosvenor Square mansion well before noon.
Although he had been slightly taken aback at the unexpected appearance of the rather comely young woman who had seen fit to invade his privacy, he had merely taken her arrival as yet another token of the landlord’s regret at not having been able to furnish him with a suitable bed for the night, as was his due! And, although the girl had turned out not to be the accommodating chambermaid of his fancy, she had certainly been a highly curvaceous little creature, in addition to having been blessed with quite the most kissable lips that he had had the pleasure of tasting in some time.
Throwing on a couple more logs, he stoked up the fire and, thrusting a cushion behind his head, stretched out his legs and placed his feet on the leather-topped log box, having reached the happy conclusion that, provided he got away at first light, he could avoid any inherent complications of coming face-to-face with his late-night visitor—not to mention any irate husband or father that lady might have in tow!
In the event, however, it seemed that the Viscount’s good intentions were to be brought to nought. On pulling back the curtain at around six of the clock the following morning, in order to check the state of the weather outside, he was dismayed to find that, rather than having improved overnight, as he had supposed it must, the situation appeared to have worsened to an even more worrying degree.
Despite the fact that the fierce wind of the previous day looked to have finally blown itself out, the continuously falling snow had enveloped the entire landscape in a soft white blanket as far as the eye could see. Whilst this highly picturesque scene was, without doubt, one of awe-inspiring splendor, and more than enough to cause Marcus to draw in his breath in appreciative wonder at Nature’s handiwork, it was not long before it came to him that the hasty departure on which he had set his mind was now totally out of the question. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the depth of the snow that filled the little hollow wherein the tavern nestled would make the reaching of the post road well nigh impossible—given that the drifts outside his window were already somewhere in the region of three feet deep! It would take three or four men half a day at least to dig out a passageway up that steep incline to get to the highway, and even then one could not be entirely sure that the post road would even be traversable—there had certainly been no indication of any passing
traffic for the past hour or so, as far as he had been aware!
Stifling a yawn, the Viscount ran his fingers over the bristles on his chin and wondered how long it would be before anyone would think to fetch him some hot water in order that he might wash and shave. He had heard various sounds of movement emanating from the passage outside his room, and the welcome smell of freshly brewed coffee had been wafting its way into the little parlour for some time now.
He stood, undecided, for a further moment or two but then, as the smell of the coffee grew ever more enticing, causing his empty stomach to growl in anticipation, he plonked himself back down on the fireside chair and began the almost Herculean task of pulling on his boots—something of a masterly feat, in his case, considering the lack of both valet and boot-horn!
It was while he was attempting to smooth the creases of his crumpled cravat into some sort of acceptable order that, on turning his head, he happened to catch sight of a small brown leather object that had somehow become lodged behind one of the legs of the side table that stood against the rear wall of the parlour. Curious, he reached down to pick it up. No sooner had he recognised the object for what it was—a lady’s reticule—than his lips began to curve in amused recall of the previous night’s thwarted encounter.
So, this was what the young woman had been after when she had come creeping into his room! It must hold something of immense value to have caused her to leave her bed and wander, half-clad, into a gentleman’s sleeping quarters! Not that she was likely to have known that it was anyone’s sleeping quarters at the time, he was quick to remind himself, as he unwound the thongs of the shabby purse and tipped its meagre contents into the palm of his hand.
A puzzled frown creased his brow as he stared down at the sum total that he held—a single half-crown, three sixpenny pieces and a few odd coppers! Less than five shillings, all told—hardly worth anyone going to so much bother to retrieve, he thought dispassionately, as he returned the coins to the reticule and retied its leather thongs before thrusting it into his jacket pocket.
Regency: Rakes & Reputations (Mills & Boon M&B) Page 26
