Yes, if any two people knew what betrayal felt like it was them.
She hugged his waist, wishing there was something she could do to ease his pain. To let him know that she didn’t think any less of him for struggling the way he had in the coldness of his arranged marriage, and with his feelings about the way it had ended.
And suddenly it occurred to her that there was one obvious way to do both.
‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘You still deserve a wife who wants to make you happy. Who appreciates how good and kind you are. Who wants you to touch her and give her children. And, what’s more, I rather think I’d like to be that woman.’
She raised herself up on one elbow so that she could look down into his face. Not that she could see it clearly, in their gloomy corner of the barn. But she certainly felt his entire body tense.
‘Are you saying,’ he said repressively, ‘that you have fallen in love with me? After just one day?’
‘Oh, no,’ she admitted. ‘But I think I very easily could. I’ve resisted the thought of marriage before, because I couldn’t see the point of exchanging one sort of prison for another. I just kept thinking I’d only have to put up with living in Aunt Charity’s house for a limited time and then I’d be free. But I don’t think marriage to you would feel like a prison at all. You don’t seem to want to change me into someone else. You quite like me as I am, don’t you?’
She hurried on, because now she’d started she might as well get it all out into the open.
‘And I wouldn’t even mind handing my fortune into your keeping, if we ever get our hands on it. I’d feel as if you’d earned the right to it. I’m sure you would put it to good use. Could you not do with an injection of capital into whatever business you are in? If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t seem to be all that plump in the pocket, or you wouldn’t have fallen into such difficulties today, would you?’
‘You...you don’t know what you are saying,’ he hissed, rolling over onto his back so he could look up at her. And then, probably because he couldn’t, he reached up to touch her face.
Then snatched it back.
She smiled to herself in the dark.
‘I’ve already told you I wouldn’t mind you touching me,’ she said gently. ‘The way a man touches his wife. In fact,’ she admitted daringly, ‘I think I would like it very much.’
‘And I repeat: you don’t know what you are saying.’
‘Not...not entirely, no. But I do know that I couldn’t lie next to any other man, the way I am lying here with you, and feel like this.’
There was a beat of silence before he said, in a voice that was scarce more than a whisper, ‘Like what?’
‘All sort of tingly and warm. As...as if something very wonderful is about to happen. Something to do with your lips. And your chest.’ She reached between them and laid her hand on his chest, where she could feel his heart beating a rapid tattoo. ‘And your legs.’ She ran her bare foot up and down his calf. ‘I have the strangest urge to wrap myself all around you like a vine.’
‘It’s the enforced intimacy—that’s what it is,’ he grated. ‘We’ve been thrown together in unusual circumstances and you’re feeling...grateful to me. Attracted, too, I don’t doubt. Just as I’m attracted to you. Extremely so.’
Her heart leapt.
‘Though I feel I should warn you that it might well be due to some after-effect of the drug they gave us.’
Her heart plummeted.
‘And once this is over...’
No, no, it wasn’t just because she’d unwittingly swallowed a sleeping draught. The only reason their enforced intimacy had made her admire him so was because all the tests they’d faced had proved what he was really like, beneath the harsh exterior.
‘I will still feel like this tomorrow—I’m sure I will.’
‘Prudence, Prudence...’ He did reach up to cup her face then. ‘God, whoever gave you such an inappropriate name? Practically begging a man to make love to you is the least prudent thing an innocent girl like you could do.’
‘I haven’t begged you to make love to me,’ she protested, her pride stung. ‘I was speaking in a hypothetical way, about marriage. You were the one who leap-frogged over the practicalities and went straight to the wedding night.’
‘How can I help thinking about the wedding night when you’re lying here half-naked and talking of wrapping yourself around me like a vine?’ He pulled her down so that she was sprawled half over his body. Then, just to make sure she knew what he was talking about, he shifted slightly, so that his pelvis made contact with her hip. ‘Can you not feel what you do to me?’
Oh, yes, she could feel it. She’d spent her early childhood following the drum. She’d learned a whole lot more about what went on between men and women than sheltered girls her age would have known.
‘So you do want me, then? It isn’t just me feeling like this?’
‘Of course I want you,’ he growled. ‘I’ve wanted you ever since the moment you sat up in bed this morning and gave me an eyeful of your breasts!’
‘But...you threw me out of your room.’
‘I thought you were trying to entrap me. I thought...’ He groaned. ‘I don’t know what I thought.’ He ran his hands up and down her back. ‘But I...’ He hauled her close and breathed in raggedly. Clasped the back of her head to his throat.
He was trembling.
‘Prudence, I beg of you, don’t tempt me any more. You have placed your trust in me. Told me you think I am an upright, honest man. And it’s true that all my life I have prided myself on doing the right thing. Even when I knew my wife had committed adultery I refused to sink to her level. But right now I am so close to behaving like the worst kind of scoundrel. It’s bad enough that people will be accusing me of taking your innocence. If I do so in fact I will have become the very villain they sought to make of me.’
‘No, you won’t,’ she protested. ‘But I understand what you’re saying. And you’re right.’ She sighed. ‘If we sin together tonight we would have to marry.’
She didn’t want it to come to that. She didn’t want him to regard her as an obligation. She didn’t want him to wake up in the morning feeling that he had no choice but to marry her because he’d ruined her reputation.
She supposed it would have to be enough to know that he wanted her. Wanted her enough to tremble and spear his fingers into her hair, to run his hand to the upper curve of her bottom before snatching it back. To know that the fierce attraction wasn’t one-sided.
She snuggled into his embrace. ‘We should just go to sleep, then.’
He made a strange kind of strangled sound. ‘Sleep? How do you expect me to sleep now?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, yawning sleepily. ‘But I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep my eyes open for much longer. I’m exhausted. Aren’t you?’
He muttered something under his breath that she didn’t quite catch. By the tone of his voice, it wasn’t anything particularly pleasant. So she didn’t ask him what it was. She just closed her eyes and surrendered to the bliss of being held in his arms.
Chapter Ten
Technically, this was the second night he’d slept with a woman—but since last night he hadn’t known anything about it, it felt like the first.
It was the first time he’d been aware of her generous curves pressing into his side. The first time he’d breathed in the scent of her hair and rubbed his cheek against the soft profusion of her curls. The first time she’d tucked her poor little ice-cold feet between his legs, seeking warmth—and inadvertently creating it in his own loins.
He ground his teeth at the effort it took to keep completely still, when what he wanted was to roll over and flatten her beneath him.
No—no, he didn’t! To do anything of the sort would be worse th
an anything that had befallen her thus far. She trusted him. Had told him she would even trust him with her fortune, her future, before curling up at his side and trusting him with her very virtue.
He bit back a groan. She’d told him she thought he was upright, when the truth was that the only upright part of him was the very part that wanted to betray her. Not that he would betray her. Whatever it cost him in terms of comfort, tonight he wouldn’t do that.
He wasn’t an idiot. Later, when she learned the truth about him, he needed to be able to remind her that he had been true to her—in this if in nothing else.
Someone up there, he mused, looking at the stars peeping through a gap in the roof, must be laughing at him. Because the first time he’d ever strayed from the narrow confines of his life—from the straight and narrow, if you wanted to put it like that—was the first and only time a woman had placed such faith in him. The first time that he had even cared about a woman’s opinion of him, come to that.
Heaven help him, now she was sliding her cold little hand round his waist. It was just as he’d predicted. The temperature had plummeted once the sun had gone down. The fact that he could see all those stars through the barn roof meant that the sky had stayed as clear as it had been all day. There might even be a touch of ground frost by morning. He’d think about frost. Or snow. Or ice. Anything cold. To take his mind off the way she was squirming closer to him in her sleep, seeking the warmth of his body.
It probably didn’t help that he’d slept so deeply the night before. It meant that now he didn’t feel in the least drowsy. Right, then... Since he was wide awake, he might as well turn the sleepless hours to good account. He would consider Prudence’s future, rather than what he wanted to do with her now. The satisfaction he’d gain from bringing down the pair of villains who’d cheated her and dragged him into their plot.
There. That was better. Considering the cold, relentless march of justice was a much more sensible way to spend the night than revelling in the way all her trusting softness felt in his arms. Or savouring the scent of her body mingled with the scent of warmed hay.
Damn. That had only worked for—what?—less than ten seconds?
It was going to be a very long night.
But at some point he must have drifted off. Because the next thing he knew he was being woken, for the second day in a row, by a voice raised in anger.
This time when he opened his eyes it was to see a ruddy-faced man pointing a gun in his face, rather than merely a woman threatening him with a bony finger.
‘Do you realise,’ he said coldly, ‘how dangerous it is to point a gun at someone?’
At his side, Prudence gasped, and stiffened in his hold.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, remembering that it was the second time in as many days that she’d been shocked awake, too. ‘He won’t shoot us.’
‘Oh, won’t I?’ said the man with the gun.
‘No. There are laws preventing such things.’
‘I can do what I like on my own land,’ said the man with the gun, belligerently. ‘Since you got no right to be ’ere.’
‘No, perhaps not,’ admitted Gregory, for he had very little patience with people who trespassed on his own land.
‘Ain’t no perhaps about it! I don’t hold with vagrants making free with decent folk’s property.’
‘Oh, but we’re not vagrants,’ said Prudence, sitting up and pushing her wildly tousled hair out of her eyes.
The farmer—for he had to assume that was this man’s status, since he’d claimed they were trespassing on his land—glowered at her. ‘Thieves, then. On the run from the law I ’spect.’
‘We are no such thing,’ said Gregory, sitting up and putting his arm round Prudence’s shoulders. It said something about how frightened she was that she shrank into his side and clutched at his shirt front. ‘In fact the very opposite. We have been robbed.’
‘Oh-ar?’ The farmer sneered at them.
‘Yes. You see, this young lady’s guardians formed a plot to rob her of her inheritance. They drugged us both and abandoned her in my bed, then made off with all her belongings. And then,’ he said, rubbing his hand over his head in what was probably a vain attempt to remove all traces of hay. ‘Then I was robbed, too—of my purse. And I had to leave my horse and gig at an inn as surety. Which is why we are cutting across country on foot to...’
He floundered to a halt. It probably wasn’t a good idea to name the property to which they were heading, or give any hint that it belonged to him, or the man might guess who he was. And then the tale of what had befallen him this past few days would be all over the county in no time.
He’d be a laughing stock.
‘A likely tale,’ the farmer said. ‘Do you take me for an idiot? Come on—up you get,’ he said, jerking the gun in an up and down motion. ‘We’ll see what Jeffers has to say about this.’
Jeffers? Oh, no. He couldn’t risk being hauled up before the local magistrate. He’d had the wretched man over to dine once or twice when he’d been staying down here before.
‘Oh, no, please—there is no need for that,’ said Prudence plaintively. Then she elbowed him in the ribs. ‘I don’t know why you needed to make up such a silly story, darling.’
Darling? He turned to stare at her.
‘The truth is...’ She clasped her hands at her chest and gazed up at the man with the gun earnestly. ‘We are runaway lovers.’
‘Well, I dunno if that ain’t as bad,’ said the farmer. Although he did lower his gun just a touch.
‘I know—you must think we are wicked. But we are so very much in love. And my guardians are so strict. And, yes, it is rather shocking of us to defy them all, but we haven’t broken a single law. Except perhaps for trespassing on your land. And if only we could pay for spending the night in your barn we would. But, you see, we did get robbed. That part of Gregory’s story is true. So we haven’t a penny between us. However, we are perfectly happy to work for you for an hour or so to repay you for spending the night here. Aren’t we, darling?’
She turned and gave him a look loaded with meaning.
‘Work?’ The farmer tucked his gun under his arm and gave them a speculative look.
‘Well,’ said Prudence. ‘I’m sure you are a very busy man. Farms don’t run themselves, do they? And wouldn’t it be better to make us pay for our stay here than waste time running to fetch the local constable?’
‘Ar...’ said the farmer, scratching his chin. ‘There is that. And I can tell from yer voice that yer a lady. No beggarwoman I ever knew of spoke like you. Even though you are dressed like that.’ His eyes flicked over her rumpled dress, down to her bare feet. And narrowed.
‘You ain’t used to walking nowheres, either, are yer?’
Was Gregory imagining it, or did the farmer look as though he was starting to feel sorry for her?
‘No,’ she said plaintively, shaking her head.
He was. The farmer was definitely looking sorry for her. But then the state of her feet was enough to melt the hardest of hearts.
‘You’d best get up to the house, then, miss,’ said the farmer, albeit rather gruffly, ‘and get them feet seen to.’
‘Oh, that’s very kind of you, but—’
‘This ’ere chap of yourn can do some chores to pay for flattening what’s left of my hay.’
‘Oh, but—’
‘He’s right, P... darling.’ He glared at her warningly, hoping she’d get his hint not to reveal their names. Though she’d already called him Gregory, hadn’t she?
Thank goodness she didn’t know any of his other names, or they might all have come tumbling out.
‘Let me do some work while you get your blisters seen to. They robbed us in the night, you see,’ he informed the farmer. ‘At the last inn. Took all our luggage. My poor
love has no stockings to wear and—’
‘I don’t want to hear about that sort of thing,’ said the farmer, taking a shocked step back at the mention of Prudence’s undergarments. ‘What I do want to know is what kind of work you can do. Don’t want you blundering about causing damage as I’ll have to clear up after.’
‘I have done a bit of work about the stables,’ he admitted, after only the briefest of pauses while he searched frantically for some skill he possessed which might be of use to a farmer.
The farmer glowered at him. Then at Prudence. ‘Run off with yer groom, have yer?’ He clucked his tongue. ‘Well, ain’t none of my business, I s’pose. Too late to do anything about it now, anyhow.’ He glanced meaningfully at the crushed hay, at the way Gregory’s arm stayed protectively round Prudence’s shoulder, and the way she leaned into him, one hand resting trustingly against his chest.
‘Come on, you,’ he said, pointing a stubby, gnarled finger at Gregory. ‘Let’s see what yer made of.’
The farmer’s voice was loaded with contempt. He might have some sympathy for Prudence, but he’d obviously cast Gregory in the role of evil seducer. For the second time in as many days he was being accused of the one thing he hadn’t done.
The only difference this morning was that he now heartily wished he had.
* * *
Prudence wiped round her eggy plate with a crust of bread, fresh from the oven, and sighed with contentment.
‘’Tis good to see you have a hearty appetite,’ said the farmer’s wife, whose name was Madge. She had taken one look at Prudence’s feet, thrown her hands up in horror, and then gone all motherly.
‘Well, this is such good food,’ said Prudence, with a sigh. Madge had heaped her plate with bacon, fried eggs and mushrooms. ‘We hardly ate a thing yesterday.’
And she wasn’t sure when she might be eating anything again. Gregory—for she couldn’t help thinking of him by his first name after spending the night in his arms—had said they weren’t far from his aunt’s place and was assuming they would be welcome. But she wasn’t banking on it. Aunts, she had discovered, could be extremely unpredictable.
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