the battle with his reeling senses.
Marcus was only just in time to steady his cousin’s slumped body and calm his spooked horse.
‘Thank heaven you have some manners, Hercules, old fellow,’ he murmured as his own horse stilled, obedient to the pressure of his rider’s legs, which was all Marcus could currently spare to control him.
The spirited bay snorted his disapproval of all that was going on around him, but fortunately made no attempt to gallop off when Marcus slid out of his saddle, while at the same time somehow keeping Nick in his until he could secure him.
‘We’re in the devil of a fix, old man,’ he informed himself as much as his long-time mount.
He finally managed to calm both horses to the extent where Nick’s precious black stallion was as quiet as he could ever be accused of being. Hercules nuzzled his owner’s shoulder as if to remind him there were more important things to think about than wayward cavalry officers and their restless mounts, such as oats and water, probably in that order.
Yet the woods were thick on either side of the track and it was at least a couple of miles since they had passed a rundown wayside tavern Marcus suspected must be the haunt of thieves, mainly because no one else would bother to go there. Maybe he should have insisted they stay for the night nevertheless, but he doubted his ability to guard his cousin and their horses so they could leave it again come morning. All he could do now was tie Nick to his saddle—as they sometimes had the lesser wounded on the march—and hope to find some sort of makeshift shelter for the coming night.
It was darker here than it would be in the open, and from the look of the overcast sky there would be no kindly moon to mark their path later. Marcus was contemplating making camp on the edge of the road when at last he caught a slight whiff of woodsmoke on the chill air. Used to moving in hostile territory, he was still too cautious to rush toward its source. This might not be Spain or France where hostile armies sometimes camped within yards of one another, but he wasn’t fool enough to think everyone in England a bluff John Bull, waiting to welcome the Marquis of Druro’s officers with unalloyed delight.
Cursing their vulnerability, he kept the horses as quiet as he could and listened intently. Nothing but the normal sounds of nature, which did little to help or hinder his attempts to plumb the darkness. Deciding all he could do was proceed with caution, he led the horses forward as quietly as possible. Of course it could be charcoal burners, but he was unsure they would be any better off with them than the rum company he might have found at the wayside inn. At last the scent led him down a ride and deeper into the forest, and he had no choice now but to follow it, for Nick was beginning to groan in his uneasy stupor and Marcus was desperate.
‘Idiot,’ he murmured, wishing now he had never listened to his cousin’s pleas not to be left behind in France for the surgeons to practise on when Marcus was forced to sell out and come home himself.
He was so busy wondering if there was a way to safeguard Nick’s limb from the knife that he almost missed the hut. Even in the twilight he could see how humble it was, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, so he rapped on the warped door. After a couple of very long minutes he grew impatient with waiting and called out.
‘We are benighted travellers and mean you no harm.’ His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the still clearing, but he was certain someone was inside pretending not to be and felt so thoroughly exasperated he didn’t much care if he frightened them. ‘Confound it, we need help!’
The householder seemed to consider his less than humble demands for shelter. ‘We ain’t got nothin’, go away!’ an anxious voice finally quavered, as if its owner was on the edge of panic.
‘Just open the door, child,’ he ordered more softly and waited with what little patience he could now summon.
Still the door stayed stubbornly closed and he finally had enough of standing outside like some frustrated lover pleading for admittance to his lady’s bower. Another groan from the direction of the now-tethered horses made him barge the warped barrier out of his way and force himself on the squatters, who must be the only ones desperate enough to want such a tumbledown shack in the first place.
‘I did say we needed succour,’ he said sharply as he stood on the threshold and surveyed the mean space within.
‘An’ I told yer we ’ad nowt,’ a surly voice mumbled in the darkness.
Instinct warned him to expect an attack of some sort, and he hastily raised his arm to take the blow from a bolt of wood instead of letting it hammer down on his head. Marcus shot out his hand to pin a slim wrist with merciless fingers until the improvised club fell to the floor and he forced his attacker’s arm up his back.
‘Ouch! You brute!’ the supposed child squeaked and he nearly let the girl go as he finally realised he had a slender and decidedly feminine body clamped against his own and not that of a scrubby youth after all.
‘Fortunately for you, ma’am, you are quite out in that assumption. Now shall we begin again?’
‘That fib would be a sight more convincing if you was to let me go.’
‘I may not be the villain you were anticipating, but neither am I a complete flat, my girl. So, do you promise to behave?’
‘Mumchance when you’m twice as big as me, your lordship.’
‘Never mind obfuscation, wench, promise not to attack again and I’ll let you go.’
‘I promise,’ she spat and the fury in her voice reassured him she meant to honour her word, as she was so furious about giving it.
Cautiously they stood like disengaged duellists, trying to assess their new positions in virtual darkness.
‘This is ridiculous, you must have the means to produce a light of some sort to have lit a fire in the first place.’
‘And wasn’t that a big mistake?’ the girl mumbled irritably as she fumbled about in the darkness to find the dark lantern that should have made him even more suspicious of her.
While it would have been a gross exaggeration to say the hut was flooded with light, the glow of a single tallow candle revealed the grim details.
‘There’s nothing here,’ Marcus exclaimed in disappointment, visions of getting Nick settled comfortably out of the cold and damp of an English spring vanishing like his breath on the chill air.
‘Told yer,’ the girl told him gleefully, arms folded across her skinny body as she nodded her triumph.
‘Which means you have naught either,’ he pointed out with excusable exasperation.
‘True,’ she acknowledged cheerfully enough and nodded in the direction from which he had come. ‘Road’s that way.’
‘I have no intention of dragging a wounded man any further along it tonight, so either you tolerate us for the night or leave yourself.’
‘I was here first,’ she said sulkily, the wind apparently taken out of her sails by the thought of a night in the open.
‘And ordinarily I should gallantly leave you to your solitude. However I have more important things to worry about tonight than a sullen runaway maid without a feather to fly with.’
On the point of impulsively informing the hateful creature that she actually had two pounds and ninepence ha’penny to her name, Thea just managed to keep her tongue between her teeth. Since that was all she had left of the few guineas she had managed to hide from the Winfordes, she had better keep quiet about her available fortune. She bit down on the urge to spark back and eyed the intruder balefully through the gloom.
She should never have given in to temptation to light that fire in the first place. Although she had let it out once her scratch meal was eaten, the damage was done. Still, she could have brought far worse down on herself than an officer in search of a billet for the night. Come to think of it, she could yet if she wasn’t more careful.
‘Am