0373298803 (R)

by Annie Burrows

  ‘Now, you must let me help with the dishes,’ she said. ‘Or something.’

  ‘’Tain’t fitting for a fine lady such as yerself to ruin her hands with dishes,’ said Madge.

  ‘I’m not a fine lady. I’m just...’ She didn’t know exactly how to describe herself. ‘When I was a girl...’ She decided to explain as much as she could. ‘We travelled all over the place. Papa was a soldier, you see. So Mama and I had to learn how to do all sorts of chores. I can kill a chicken, and milk a goat, and bake bread.’

  ‘Ain’t no call for you to go killing none of our chickens,’ Madge protested.

  ‘No, of course not, I just—’

  ‘Very well, m’dear. You can do the dishes.’ She frowned. ‘’Twill make it look as though I kept you busy, anyhow, won’t it? If Peter comes back in sudden-like.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Prudence meekly.

  She was more than willing to let Madge think she was grateful to be spared the prospect of falling foul of her bad-tempered husband if that was what it took to help her overcome her scruples at having a guest do menial work.

  The moment Prudence finished the dishes Madge urged her back to the kitchen table.

  ‘Here, you eat a bit of this,’ she said, spooning jam onto another thick slice of bread and butter. ‘That varmint had no business dragging a lady such as you out into the wilds with no more’n the clothes on your back, and starving you besides.’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault—really it wasn’t,’ she protested, before taking a bite of bread and jam.

  But she knew she’d made Madge think it was, by being tight-lipped in response to all her very natural questions. Madge must think she was having second thoughts, or was ashamed of having been so impetuous, or something.

  She was just wondering if she could come up with a story that would clear Gregory’s reputation, when the flavour of the jam exploded into her mouth.

  ‘Oh, goodness,’ she moaned. ‘But this jam is good.’

  ‘Last year’s strawberries,’ said Madge proudly.

  ‘I dreamed about strawberries last night,’ she admitted.

  ‘Well, you can take a pot of this jam, then.’

  ‘Oh, no, she can’t!’

  Prudence saw that the doorway, in which the door had been standing open, was now full of the farmer and Gregory. A distinctly grimy, damp, dishevelled and irritated Gregory.

  ‘She’s nobbut a hussy, running off with her groom. Should have put her to work—not filled her with jam what’s meant for the market next week.’

  ‘’Tweren’t meant for no market. That was from a jar I’d already opened!’

  As the farmer and his wife launched into a heated argument Gregory jerked his head at her, indicating that she should get up and leave. Which she was only too glad to do.

  ‘Thank you so much for seeing to my feet,’ she said, edging past Madge just as she was taking a breath in preparation for slinging another pithy remark at her husband. ‘One day you must give me the receipt for that ointment.’

  Gregory shot her a look of disbelief, as though he couldn’t imagine ever coming anywhere near this farm again.

  The farmer, who’d glanced at Prudence’s feet when she spoke of them, was now glaring at Madge in a very similar fashion.

  ‘Where’d she get those stockings?’

  ‘From me, of course, you cloth-head,’ said Madge.

  ‘Ain’t it enough I caught the pair of them trespassing on our land but you must give ’em the food from our table and the very clothes off our back?’

  Prudence had just reached the doorway, and Gregory’s side, when Madge darted up to her.

  ‘Here,’ she said, pressing the remains of the loaf and the opened jar of jam into her hands in defiance of her husband, who was positively swelling with indignation.

  ‘My kitchen,’ said Madge, whirling back to him. ‘My jam. I made it. And you swore I could do what I wanted with the money I make from it.’

  ‘Ar, but I didn’t mean for you to—’

  They didn’t wait to hear what the farmer hadn’t meant for Madge to do with her jam, but took off as fast as they could go.

  ‘What a charming scene of rustic marital bliss,’ said Gregory with heavy sarcasm as they made for the barn. ‘No wonder he came out here in a mood to shoot something.’

  ‘Here,’ said Prudence, thrusting the loaf and the crock of jam at him. ‘You are clearly one of those men who wake in a bad mood and need something to eat before you are fit company.’

  ‘It is no longer first thing in the morning,’ he replied, taking the bread and ripping off a hunk. ‘And it is all very well for you to complain of my mood when you have clearly been treated like a queen in that farmhouse kitchen while I,’ he said, dipping the bread into the open jam pot, ‘have been mucking out the cow byre.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘I thought I could smell something.’

  He glowered at her.

  ‘I hope you washed your hands.’

  His glower deepened. ‘I washed not only my hands but my boots, my breeches and my hair,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘Under the pump.’

  ‘Oh.’ Well, that explained why his hair was wet. ‘I did the breakfast dishes,’ she put in, hoping to placate him.

  ‘Mrs Grumpy Farmer was clearly a decent sort of woman. Mr Grumpy Farmer did nothing but complain and berate me every time he came to check on my progress. And as for the disgusting state of that byre...’ He shuddered expressively. ‘No wonder he didn’t want to clean it out himself.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Well, I’m very sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have volunteered our services to Mr Grumpy Farmer with the Gun. I just thought it would be better than having to explain ourselves to the local law. When you started telling him what had happened to us it all sounded so implausible that I could see exactly why he wasn’t believing a word of it. Indeed, had I not lived through it I wouldn’t have believed a word of it myself.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ he said, spraying crumbs down the front of his waistcoat as he stomped across the barn to the mound of hay they’d slept on the previous night.

  ‘Um...’ she said, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘I can see how much you want your breakfast, but I really don’t want to linger here any longer than we have to. Do you?’

  ‘Your point?’ He raised one eyebrow at her in a way that expressed many things at once. All of them negative.

  ‘Well, you’re clearly going to need both your hands to deal with your bread and jam. So you won’t have one free to carry your valise. I was going to suggest I carry it, so we can make a start.’ She bent to pick it up. ‘It’s not very heavy,’ she said with some relief.

  ‘And it does have some of your things in it,’ he said, with a funny sort of glint in his eye.

  ‘Does it? What—?’ She suddenly had a vivid recollection of tossing her stays aside as she’d fled from his room. There were stockings, too. She hadn’t stopped to pull them on. And he’d put at least one of them in his pocket. But—why? It wasn’t as if they could be of any use to him. And he’d already proved that having only one stocking was of absolutely no use to her, either.

  Sometimes men were a complete mystery.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said, turning and heading out of the barn, leaving her to trot behind him with his luggage.

  She supposed he was getting his own back on her for getting a decent breakfast while he’d been mucking out a cow byre. Because it certainly wasn’t like him to behave in such an ungentlemanly fashion.

  Not that she could complain, though, could she? She’d offered to carry it, after all. And even if he’d argued that it was his job, as a big strong man, to do so, she would only have pointed out that she was perfectly capable of carrying a small bag for a short while. In a way he was paying her a compliment by taking her at
her word and letting her do as she’d suggested.

  Or so he would say if she dared say anything derogatory about the way he was striding ahead, enjoying the bread and jam, while she trotted behind him with the luggage.

  They walked along in simmering silence past various farm buildings, heading for the track she could see winding across the fields, while he demolished the bread. When the last crust was gone he frowned into the jam pot, then stuck his finger in and swirled it round to get at the very last traces. When his finger was sufficiently loaded, he raised it to his mouth and sucked it clean.

  Prudence promptly forgot why she’d been irritated with him as she watched him half close his eyes in bliss. When he set about doing something he did it with total concentration. To the exclusion of everything else.

  As if to prove her right, the moment he’d wiped the jar completely clean he set it aside on the top bar of the stile they’d just reached and turned to her with a smile.

  ‘I’ll carry that now,’ he said, holding out his hand for the valise.

  She handed it over without a word of protest. What would be the point? And, judging by the twinkle in his eye, he knew exactly what arguments had been going through her head while he’d been breaking his fast.

  He tossed the valise over the stile, then stepped up onto the first rung and swung one leg over the top. When he was safely on the other side he leaned back and reached for her hand to help her over. Since she’d just mounted the lower step his movement brought their faces to within inches of each other. And she couldn’t help noticing he had a smear of jam on his lower lip.

  ‘You have...um...’ she began, reaching out one finger to wipe the jam from his mouth.

  He moved really swiftly, catching her hand and stilling it. And looked at her in a considering sort of way, as though wondering what to make of her. Why didn’t he want her touching his face? Well, then, she wouldn’t do so. But when she went to pull her hand back his hold on it tightened. And the look in his eyes went sort of slumberous. And then he pulled her hand right up to his mouth, dipped his head, and sucked her forefinger inside.

  He swirled his tongue round her finger and her knees went weak. She pitched forward, bracing herself against the top of the stile with her free hand.

  He released her finger from his mouth and looked at her. In a steady sort of way that seemed to dare her to do what she wanted. So she did. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. He tasted of jam. And fresh bread. And outdoors. And man.

  She reached for him and clung as hard as she could with the stile between them. And they kissed and kissed and kissed.

  When they finished her legs were shaking so much that the stile might as well have been a sheer brick wall. There was no way she was going to be able to get over it.

  As though he knew how she felt, Gregory got onto the lower step, leaned over and grasped her round the waist, then lifted her right over as though she weighed next to nothing.

  She landed on his side of the stile, breathless and shaky, flush with the solid mass of his body. And yearning for another kiss.

  He steadied her, and gently but firmly pushed her away. ‘We need to keep going.’ Then he turned to pick up his valise. ‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his hand to her.

  Which filled her with relief. He might have pushed her away, but at least he was prepared to hold her hand. It was like last night. The way he’d turned over, yet kept hold of her hand to let her know he wasn’t rejecting her. So she put her hand in his. And noticed, for the first time, that Mr Grumpy Farmer lived on the prettiest farm she’d ever seen. There were primroses on the banks. Little white clouds scudding across the blue sky. Madge’s stockings were of thick, serviceable cotton which cushioned her feet from her shoes so that they no longer caused her agony with every step. And the scent of green growing things was almost managing to overpower the rather unpleasant odour emanating from Gregory’s general vicinity.

  All in all, she didn’t think she’d ever felt quite so happy.

  Until, that was, she darted a look up at Gregory’s face. For he didn’t look as though he was wallowing in the memory of strawberry kisses over the stile, or indeed enjoying walking through the countryside in any way at all. He certainly didn’t look as though he was thanking his lucky stars he’d fallen in with a wealthy girl who’d proposed marriage to him the night before.

  On the contrary. Gregory looked the way a man might look if he was on his way to the scaffold.

  A cold hand squeezed at her stomach.

  She’d thought that last night in the barn, when he’d told her about his marriage, it had meant that they were becoming close. Which was why she’d blurted out the suggestion that they should marry. But he hadn’t agreed, had he? Just because he’d kissed her, that didn’t mean he wanted to go as far as marrying her, did it? She’d gone and jumped in with both feet again, as Aunt Charity would say, the way she always did. The way her mother always had.

  A man like him couldn’t possibly want a girl like her for a wife, could he? How could she have forgotten that she’d made an exhibition of herself by singing in the market place? Or that she’d very nearly killed him by throwing that bit of rock? Men didn’t generally marry women whose behaviour they couldn’t predict. Let alone women who might accidentally kill them if there were any loose rocks to hand.

  ‘You don’t want to marry me at all, do you?’

  Her stomach cramped again. She’d made a total fool of herself. Here she’d been, assuming he must be dreaming about how he could invest her money to expand his business, whatever it was, but the truth was he hadn’t actually said yes. And now she’d gone and kissed him, assuming he was as keen on the idea as she was.

  ‘Last night, when you told me about your marriage, I thought... Oh, how silly of me.’ It was all much clearer this morning. ‘You were trying to explain why you didn’t wish to marry again, weren’t you? And I...’

  ‘Hmm? What?’ He turned and stared at her as though he’d completely forgotten she was there.

  She wrenched her hand from his. ‘I am sure we can come up with some other way out of our predicament.’

  Even though she had kissed him. What was a kiss, after all? Men were always trying to snatch kisses—especially from girls who practically threw themselves into their arms. Even if they appeared to enjoy the kiss it didn’t mean they actually wanted to marry the girl they’d been kissing. Men with less honour than him would make the most of the opportunity to have carnal relations with a girl if she was silly enough to indicate she was willing before he put a ring on her finger.

  ‘You don’t need to go to the lengths of marrying me,’ she said.

  * * *

  What was the matter with her? he wondered. Why had she suddenly changed her mind about marrying him?

  He grabbed her hand back and held it tightly. ‘There is no other way out of our “predicament”, as you put it, apart from marriage. No way at all.’

  He’d gone over it time and time again. Although Prudence was so far removed from him socially that everyone would describe it as a mésalliance, he was going to have to marry her. Oh, not to avoid scandal. But because after that kiss there was no way he was going to let her go. And because he was almost certain she’d never agree to be his mistress.

  If he offered her carte blanche, even though it was something he’d never offered any other woman, he couldn’t see Prudence taking it as a compliment. In fact she was more likely to take such a proposition as an insult. She might even feel so insulted she’d never forgive him. And he couldn’t risk that. She was going to be upset enough as it was once they reached Bramley Park, where he would no longer be able to hide his true identity from her.

  But he wanted Prudence.

  And he was going to have Prudence.

  That was all there was to it.

  Chapter Eleven />
  Prudence’s fingers were going numb. Once or twice she’d been on the verge of complaining about the way he was crushing them, but she’d been afraid he might let go altogether. And at least while he was holding her hand she had some connection with him.

  He hadn’t spoken a word since telling her that there was no way out of their predicament but marriage. He’d never been what you’d call a chatty sort of man, but since then he’d become downright distant.

  He was also walking slower and slower, dragging his feet, as though he was trying to put off reaching their destination for as long as possible. The only conclusion she could draw was that he was having serious second thoughts about marrying her. It was one thing admitting he wanted to bed her. But in the cold light of day perhaps he was starting to wonder if marrying her to get what he wanted was going a step too far.

  Which was perfectly understandable, given the grief his last marriage had brought him. Especially since he hadn’t known her long enough to be sure she would take her marriage vows seriously.

  ‘There,’ he said grimly as they crested a rise. ‘That’s Bramley Park.’

  He came to a complete standstill, gazing down at a substantial park spread out on the slopes of the next valley. A high stone wall divided the neatly landscaped grounds from the rougher grazing land on which they stood. There was so much parkland she couldn’t even see the house it surrounded.

  ‘That is where your aunt lives?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She must be a wealthy woman.’ Only wealthy people had houses stuck in the middle of so much land, with high stone walls to keep ordinary people out.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh? But—’

  ‘Come on,’ he said impatiently, veering to the left and tugging her after him down the slope towards the wall which bisected the lower part of the valley.