The Misguided Matchmaker

by Nadine Miller

  “We’re going to have to find shelter,” he said quickly to hide his frustration. Moments later he pointed to a group of farm buildings on the distant horizon. “It will be dark by the time we reach there. We should be able to sleep in the barn with no one the wiser if we rise before dawn.”

  “Sleep in the barn?” Maddy blinked. He expected her to spend the night alone with him in a hayloft? She doubted that even a parent as careless as her father would condone such sleeping arrangements. She gave him a quelling look. “For the sake of propriety, if nothing else, I believe we should find a respectable inn, monsieur.”

  “I can think of nothing I’d like better than a comfortable featherbed and a hot meal,” he agreed. “If you can guarantee we shall find such accommodations within the next mile, which I gauge to be our trusty steed’s limit of endurance, I shall gladly seek it out.”

  “You know very well I cannot.”

  He shrugged. “Then I am afraid you will have to be content with a pile of straw and another meal of bread and cheese.”

  As he’d predicted, darkness had fallen by the time they pulled into the barnyard of the neat little farm. A glimmer of candlelight shone through the narrow windows of the small stone farmhouse, but the sturdy stone and timber barn stood far enough from the house to ensure no one would be aware of their furtive arrival.

  Tristan guided the old dobbin to a sheltered spot beneath the eaves of the barn, released it from the carriage and tied it to a handy hitching post. “Rest, old fellow; you’ve earned it,” he said, and promising to return later with water and feed, opened the barn door and stepped aside to let Maddy enter ahead of him.

  Closing the door behind them, he struck one of the flints Father Bertrand’s housekeeper had provided and lit the lantern he’d carried from the carriage. To his relief, the barn was as clean and tidy as the rest of the farm. Every tool was hung in place, every animal bedded down for the night; even the barn cat and her litter of kittens were settled in a basket just inside the door.

  Bales of newly mown hay and burlap sacks filled with grain were stacked between the center posts, and two milk cows and a huge, gray draft horse that whinnied his annoyance at their entrance occupied three of the animal stalls. The fourth was empty, but fresh straw had been spread on the dirt floor.

  Tristan breathed in the pungent odor of warm animal bodies and fresh manure, and memories surfaced of a long-ago night when Garth and he had stolen from their beds to watch the birth of a spring foal in the Winterhaven stables.

  Long after the foal had stood up on its wobbly legs and searched out its mother’s tit, the two of them had lain side by side in the loft and told each other their dreams of the future. Even then Garth had dreamed of Sarah and the life they would one day share at Winterhaven.

  What strange, unexpected twists their fates had taken, and how few of the dreams they had shared would ever come true. For now Maddy Harcourt, not Sarah Summerhill would be Garth’s wife and the mother of his children, and it was love of Winterhaven, not a woman, that would lead him to the altar.

  Tristan lowered his gaze to the young woman who knelt beside the purring tabby, cuddling one of the kittens. Her teeth were chattering, but not a word of complaint did she utter. Whatever else she might be, Maddy Harcourt was a woman of spirit; she would not disgrace the title of Countess of Rand. To his surprise, he found himself hoping she would even find some happiness in the marriage her father had purchased for her.

  But Maddy Harcourt’s happiness was not his problem. It was Garth who was destined to wed her, and while he could not rejoice in the union, Tristan had vowed to carry out his part of the plan to save the Ramsdens’ estates. It was the least he could do, considering all he owed them.

  In the meantime, he intended to put the best possible face on a situation he could see was utterly bewildering to his young companion. “It’s a fine barn,” he said with a cheerfulness that sounded false even to his own ears. “We could do worse for a night’s lodging.”

  He raised his eyes to search out the loft, and breathed a sigh of relief. There was plenty of room between it and the ceiling of the barn; he’d not feel dangerously confined. “It has been years since I’ve bedded down in fresh, clean straw,” he continued on the same cheerful note. “No inn on earth can provide a finer bed then that.” He eyed the row of covered buckets lining a sturdy shelf at the far end of the barn. “And there is no finer drink than milk fresh from a cow.”

  Maddy managed a smile, but she looked drawn and pale and her huge eyes seemed to swallow her fine-boned face. Tristan ruffled her damp curls, as if she truly were his young paysan companion. “Cheer up, mon petit garçon,” he teased. “The gods have smiled on us. Tonight we shall live like kings.”

  Long after Tristan had extinguished the lantern, Maddy lay wide awake, clutching the heavy cross Father Bertrand had given her. The storm that had been threatening all afternoon had struck with a vengeance shortly before they’d climbed the ladder to bed down in the fragrant straw. Rain pelted the roof above her head with the steady rat-a-tat of a thousand pebbles plunging from the heavens and the wind howled around the corners of the snug little barn like a ravaging wolf. Never in her entire life had she felt so frighteningly lost and alone.

  Not that the man sleeping beside her had been anything but gentlemanly. But there was something so impersonal about his treatment of her, she felt very much like the old horse he had led into the empty stall—just another creature he must tend to before he could eat his meager supper and retire for the night.

  He had even rubbed them both down with the rough-textured grain sacks he’d found folded on a shelf. First the dobbin, then her, explaining as he briskly rubbed her back and shoulders that it was the best he could do since they couldn’t remove their wet clothing.

  Then he’d handed her a sack so she could do the same for him. He might have considered the procedure as impersonal as currying a horse. For her, it was the most personal thing she had ever done. She still trembled, remembering the feel of hard bone and rippling muscles beneath her hands. She had never really touched a man before, except Grandpère when she’d nursed him through his final illness. She hadn’t realized how different a young man’s strong, healthy body felt from that of a sick old man.

  Grandpère. Just thinking about him brought a new wave of desolation. He had been selfish, irascible, demanding; he had even lied to her when it suited his purposes. But in his own way, he had loved her and needed her. Now there was no one in the world who either loved or needed her. Certainly not her father, who had managed very well without her for fifteen years.

  A flood of loneliness and despair swept over her. Tears that had remained frozen drops of ice deep inside her heart through the long, exhausting day suddenly thawed and cascaded down her cheeks. She felt a sob rise in her throat and could no more contain it than she could hold back the flood of tears. Burying her face in her hands, she sobbed her heart out.

  Tristan was not asleep. How could he be, with his fingers still tingling from the touch of Maddy’s slender shoulders and rigid back? Hell and damnation! The truth was, every nerve in his body tingled with awareness of the woman lying beside him. What had begun as a practical way to warm her shivering body had ended up an excruciating experience that had left him shocked and aching and randy as a blasted billy goat.

  He lay tense and wakeful, listening to the rustle of the straw as she tossed and turned, and fervently wishing they were at the end of their journey instead of the beginning. The last thing he needed was to start lusting after Garth’s future bride.

  He heard a sound. A strangled sob. Then another and another. Dear God, she was weeping again in that wild, soul-searing way of hers that sounded as if she were tearing the very heart from her breast. Overwhelmed by the frightening helplessness he always felt when faced with a woman’s tears, he rose up on his elbow and stared into the inky blackness where he knew she lay.

  “Maddy?” He wasn’t certain what he was asking, and her only answ
er was another heart-wrenching sob. He reminded himself she was very young, scarcely older than Caro, and probably given to the same hysterics. It didn’t fadge; the lie stuck in his throat. Neither Caro, nor any other woman he knew, could have weathered all she had gone through in the past twenty-four hours with the courage and resilience Maddy had shown. She was weeping because she had good reason, and his heart bled for her.

  More than anything else, he longed to take her in his arms and comfort her, but had an uneasy premonition that once he gave in to the impulse, his life would be forever changed.

  Still something about the pain etched on her face when she’d spoken of her grandfather’s deception had touched him as nothing else had in a long, long time, and her vulnerability when she’d questioned him about the father she scarcely knew still haunted him. Premonition be damned! He reached over and drew her to him.

  “Cry, Maddy. Cry it all out,” he crooned, rocking her until at long last her rigid body relaxed and she released the startled breath she’d gasped when first he’d touched her. With a smothered moan, she burrowed her face in his shoulder and sobbed out her grief until his shirt was as soaked with her tears as it previously had been with the raindrops.

  Much later, when her sobs had subsided and her slow, deep breathing told him she had fallen into an exhausted sleep, he shifted his weight to arrange her more comfortably in his arms. For a long time, he lay listening to the storm raging outside, feeling the steady beat of her heart and the answering rhythm of his own.

  The fierce thrust of desire that had gripped him earlier had mellowed, overshadowed by an aching tenderness for the slender waif sleeping so trustingly in his arms. The feeling was like nothing he had ever felt for any other woman.

  He stared into the darkness surrounding him, a man perplexed by the unexpected depths of his own emotions. With a sigh, he acknowledged that, as usual, his premonition had been right on the mark. From this moment forward, his life would be irrevocably changed, and he feared not for the better. For this time the ache that troubled him was of the heart, not the loins.

  Chapter Five

  “Wake up, Maddy. It’s almost dawn.”

  The voice sounded clipped, impatient, and Maddy struggled to do what it demanded, but her eyes felt as if someone had rubbed sand in them during the night.

  When she finally pried them open, she found Tristan bending over her, lantern in hand. With shocking clarity, she remembered she had wept all over the poor man before she’d finally fallen asleep.

  Had she slept in his arms all night while the storm raged outside the cozy loft? The depression in the straw beside her would indicate she had, and the last thought she remembered before she’d dropped off to sleep had been how comforting a man’s strong arms could be when one was badly in need of succor.

  She wanted to thank him for his kindness and assure him he need not worry; she had cried her last tear. However, he gave her no opportunity to do so. Once again he had drawn back into the same impenetrable shell of cold indifference he’d assumed after their revealing conversation of the previous day. She wondered if he only tried to keep his human side hidden from her, or if his checkered past made him hold everyone at arm’s length.

  It was immediately obvious, once she climbed down the ladder from the loft, that she was back on a par with the dobbin when it came to claiming his attention. Lower actually, since he completely ignored her, while he patiently coaxed the reluctant old horse from its comfortable stall with a promise of sugar when they reached a village where some could be procured.

  To add insult to injury, he handed her a shovel and told her to muck out the stall while he harnessed the dobbin to the carriage. It was plain to see this moody Anglais needed to be put in his place and, she decided as she shoveled the old dobbin’s foul-smelling droppings into the bucket Tristan had provided, she was just the woman to do it.

  The first crow of the farmyard rooster greeted her as she stepped from the barn when her unpleasant task was completed, and the waiting horse and cabriolet were but a deeper shadow in the gray, predawn light. Before she had time to wonder where Tristan was, he bolted around the corner of the barn, swept her up, and dumped her on the carriage seat.

  “Are you mad?” she gasped as he yanked the hem of his cassock up to his waist and crawled over her to take the reins. Then she heard it—an angry shout from the veranda of the farmhouse. Chickens scattered before the dobbin’s pounding hooves, and she heard the unmistakable squeals of a mother sow and her piglets as the right side of the carriage careened against the post of their muddy pen.

  Behind them, the farmers’ threats grew fainter as they bumped along the muddy lane, but just before they turned onto the roadway, a bullet whizzed past Maddy’s ear and imbedded itself in the trunk of an apple tree. “A near thing, that,” Tristan declared grimly, glancing her way. “I’ll not cut it so close again.” Maddy swallowed the lump of terror choking her throat and nodded her heartfelt agreement. At that moment in time, she couldn’t have managed a word if her life had depended on it.

  A short distance down the road, they topped a small rise to find the eastern sky tinged a rosy pink and the first faint rim of pumpkin-colored sun peeping over the horizon. “We’re in luck,” Tristan declared with a grin. “It appears the storm has blown over, and we should have a fine day for traveling.” At least, Maddy thought it was a grin. With a two-day’s growth of black beard masking his features, it was difficult to tell.

  Slowing the panting horse to a steady trot, Tristan settled back in his seat as calmly as if he were enjoying a pleasant country outing, and not escaping by the skin of his teeth from an irate farmer. Apparently this sort of hair-raising incident was nothing out of the ordinary to a man of his profession.

  “I have every hope of reaching a particular village just this side of Roanne well before nightfall,” Tristan said a few minutes later. “There is an excellent inn there which serves as fine a ragout as I’ve ever eaten, and the beds have eiderdown quilts as soft as a cloud.”

  He paused. “There’s a marketplace as well, where I can do a bit of horse trading.”

  “Horse trading?”

  He nodded. “We can’t count on public conveyances. Thanks to Bonaparte’s escape, most of them had already stopped functioning when I rode south. And our ancient steed has a stout heart, but his legs are ready to give out. It’s time he was put out to pasture where he need do nothing more strenuous than father a few healthy colts.”

  Maddy glanced at the spavined old horse plodding down the road ahead of the small cabriolet. Though she hated to admit it, she could see Tristan’s judgment of the animal was correct. He would never make it to Paris, much less Calais. It made her sad, as if she were somehow facing yet another painful loss to age and infirmity.

  She blinked back her foolish tears. “I shall be sorry to see him go. I have grown quite fond of him, and I know you have too.”

  “Me?” Tristan gave a snort of disgust. “I never confuse sentiment with practicality. I have better uses for my brain than to muddle it with such maudlin nonsense.”

  She felt as if he’d slapped her across the face. It was plain to see the conceited lout had more in mind than the ancient horse. He was, in fact, warning her she shouldn’t attach any undue importance to his brief show of nocturnal compassion. As if she would! She might be many things, but a fool was not one of them.

  She found herself wondering if all the men of his country were as boorish as he. If they were, she would certainly never make the mistake of becoming the wife of an Englishman.

  They had had the road virtually to themselves the previous day; today, it grew increasingly crowded with each passing hour. Many of the travelers were heading north—Royalists fleeing before Bonaparte’s encroaching army. Others, loyal to the emperor were pushing south to join forces with him and General Cambronne’s gronards.

  Twice they were almost caught in brief, isolated clashes between the two factions, but in general the Royalists and Bonapartists pas
sed each other with no more than shouted insults. Whatever their political persuasions, most Frenchman were sick to death of bloodshed. Tristan suspected this general ennui would work in the emperor’s favor. Unless some persuasive leader stepped forward to rally the Royalist troops, the Corsican might well make good his boast to reach Paris in twenty days.

  Time and again, the travelers heading south stopped him to inquire if he had come from Lyon and if the rumors were true that the city had fallen to Bonaparte without a shot. At first he was wary of these eager inquisitors, but when no one challenged his and Maddy’s disguises, he became more confident and answered their questions freely.

  As luck would have it, when they finally reached the “excellent inn” he had touted, it was full to overflowing. All that was left was one small attic room usually reserved for the servants of wealthy travelers, and Tristan had to pay an exorbitant price for that. After thinking it over, he decided it would be prudent to wait until after they’d supped to inform Maddy of the nature of their sleeping accommodations.

  In the meantime, his stomach was rumbling with hunger and his mouth was watering for a trencher of the inn’s delicious ragout. After seeing the horse and carriage delivered safely to the stable, he led Maddy in search of their supper.

  The noise in the public room was deafening. Everyone seemed to be talking at once and the stench of stale sweat and sour wine was so overpowering when they joined the other guests at the common table, it literally took his breath away. He determinedly ignored it; nothing could kill his appetite for a hot, tasty meal after another day of dry bread and hard cheese.