there ain’t nobody in the coffee room at present, since the Birmingham stage has just gone out. You’re welcome to sit in there, if you like.’
‘The coffee room?’
Her muddy-coated, bloodstained companion looked affronted. He opened his mouth to make an objection, but as he did so the landlord’s attention was snagged by a group of men at a far table, all surging to their feet as though intending to leave. They were rather boisterous, so Prudence wasn’t all that surprised when the burly man came out from behind the bar to make sure they all paid before leaving. Her newly acquired ‘uncle’, however, looked far from pleased at being brushed aside as though his order for breakfast was of no account. He must be really hungry. Or spoiling for a fight. Things really hadn’t been going his way this morning, had they?
Some of the boisterous men looked as though they were spoiling for a fight, too. But the burly landlord dealt with them deftly, thrusting them through the doorway next to which she was standing one by one the moment he’d extracted some money from them. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that he’d been in the army. He had that look about him—that confidence and air of authority she’d seen fall like a mantle over men who had risen through the ranks to become sergeants. She’d heard such men talk about opening taverns when they got out, too...
Her suppositions were rudely interrupted by a couple of the boisterous men half falling against her on their way out, knocking her against the doorjamb. She decided enough was enough. It was all very well for her uncle to stand there looking indignant, but it wasn’t getting them anywhere. Ignoring his command to stay where she was, she threaded her way through the tables to his side and plucked at his sleeve to gain his attention over the uproar.
‘Can we go into the coffee room, please...er... Uncle?’ she said.
He frowned down at her with displeasure.
She lifted her chin. ‘I’m really not feeling all that well.’ In fact the hot, crowded room appeared to be contracting and then expanding around her, and her head swam unpleasantly.
The frown on his face turned to a look of concern. ‘You will feel better for something to eat and that cup of tea,’ he declared, slipping his arm round her waist. ‘I am only sorry we cannot have complete privacy, because what we have to discuss will of necessity be rather...’
‘It certainly will,’ she muttered, rather shocked at how good it felt to have him supporting her into the coffee room, when not half an hour since she’d been trying to escape him. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested as he lowered her gently into a chair, ‘we should discuss things right now, before anyone comes in.’
‘We will be able to think more clearly once we’ve had something to eat and drink,’ he said.
‘How do you know? Have you ever been drugged before?’
He quirked one eyebrow at her as he drew up a chair next to her. Then leaned in so that he could speak quietly. ‘So you do accept that is the case?’
She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘Couldn’t there have been some sort of mistake? Perhaps I stumbled into your room by accident?’
‘And tore off all your clothes and flung them about in some sort of mad fit before leaping into my bed? It isn’t likely. Unless you are in the habit of sleepwalking?’
She flushed as he described the very scenario she’d already dismissed as being completely impossible. Shook her head at his question about sleepwalking.
‘Then what other explanation can there be?’
‘What about this Hugo person you keep asking if I know?’
‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘I still wonder if he could somehow be at the back of it. He has good reason to meddle in the business that brought me up here, you see. Only...’
He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, looking troubled. Then shook his head.
‘Only he isn’t a bad lad—not really. Only selfish and thoughtless. Or so I’ve always thought.’
‘Always? You have known him a long time?’
‘Since his birth,’ said Gregory. ‘He is my cousin. My nearest male relative, in point of fact. Ever since he left school I have been attempting to teach him all he needs to know should he ever have to step into my shoes. He couldn’t have thought it through. If it was him.’
‘But how on earth could he have persuaded my aunt to do such a thing? Let alone my uncle?’
‘He might have put the case in such a way that your aunt would have thought she was acting for your benefit.’
‘My benefit? How could it be of any benefit to...to humiliate me and abandon me? Anything could have happened. If you were not the kind of man who...that is if you were not a... I mean...although you don’t look it... I think you are a gentleman. You could easily have taken advantage of me. And you haven’t. Unless... Oh! Are you married?’
‘No. Not any more.’
‘I am so sorry. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable by mentioning a topic that must surely cause you sorrow.’
‘It doesn’t.’ He gave a sort of grimace. Then explained, ‘My wife has been dead these eight years.’
‘Oh, that’s good. I mean...not that she’s dead, but that it is long enough ago that you are past the worst of your grief. But anyway, what I was going to say was that perhaps you are simply not the sort. To break your marriage vows. I know that even the most unlikely-looking men can be doggedly faithful...’
His gaze turned so icy she shivered.
‘Not that you look like the unfaithful sort,’ she hastily amended. ‘Or the sort that... And anyway you have been married, so... That is... Oh, dear, I do not know what I mean, precisely.’
She could feel her cheeks growing hotter and hotter the longer she continued to babble at him. But to her relief his gaze suddenly thawed.
‘I think I detected a sort of compliment amongst all those observations,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Thank goodness.’ She heaved a sigh of relief. ‘I mean, it is not that I intended to compliment you, but...’
He held up his hand. ‘Just stop right there, before you say anything else to embarrass yourself. And let me bring you back to the point in question. Which is this: perhaps your aunt thought to put you in a compromising position so that she could arrange an advantageous match for you.’
‘An advantageous match? Are you mad?’ She looked at his muddy coat, his blackened eye, the grazes on his knuckles.
And he pokered up.
‘Although,’ she said hastily, in an attempt to smooth down the feathers she’d ruffled by implying that someone would have to be mad to consider marrying the likes of him, ‘of late she has been growing increasingly annoyed by my refusal to get married. On account of her wanting a particular member of her husband’s family to benefit from my inheritance.’
‘Your inheritance?’
Oh, dear. She shouldn’t have blurted that out. So far he had been behaving rather well, all things considered. But once he knew she would come into a great deal of money upon making a good marriage it was bound to bring out the worst in him. He had told her he was no longer married. And, whatever line of business he was in, acquiring a rich wife would be a definite asset.
Why hadn’t she kept quiet about it? Why was she blurting out the answers to all his questions at all?
She rubbed at the spot between her brows where once she’d thought her brain resided.
‘You don’t think,’ he persisted, ‘that your aunt chose to put you into my bed, out of the beds of all the single men who were at that inn last night, for a particular reason? Or that she chose to stay at that particular inn knowing that I would be there?’
She