She sat back on her heels. The handkerchief slid from the man’s brow to the ground on which he was still lying, glaring up at her. ‘Because I looked cold? But... But...’
She pressed her hands to her mouth again for a moment. Looking back on his actions in the light of that explanation, it all looked very, very different.
‘I’m so sorry. I thought... I thought...’
‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘I can see what you thought.’
‘Well,’ she retorted, suddenly angered by the way he was managing to look down his nose at her even though he was flat on his back and she was kneeling over him. ‘What would you have thought? I woke up in bed naked, in a strange room, with no idea how I came to be there. Aunt Charity was screaming at me, you were wandering about the place naked, shouting at me, too, and then I went to my room and it was empty, and Aunt Charity had gone with all my things, and the landlady called me names and pushed me out into the yard, and that man...that man...’ She shuddered.
‘I told you,’ he said, reaching for the abandoned handkerchief and pressing it to his brow himself, ‘that I would keep you safe. Didn’t you believe me?’
‘Of course I didn’t believe you. I’m not an idiot. I only went with you because I was so desperate to get away from that dirty, greasy stable hand. And because at least you didn’t seem...amorous. Even this morning, when we woke up together, you didn’t seem amorous. Only angry. So I thought at least you’d spare me that. Except then you took me out into the middle of nowhere and started undressing. And I... I didn’t know what to think. It’s all like some kind of nightmare.’ She felt her lower lip tremble. ‘None of this seems real.’ Her eyes burned with tears that still wouldn’t quite form.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘None of this seems real.’
And then he sat up.
Her instinct was to flinch away. Only that would look terribly cowardly, wouldn’t it? So she made herself sit completely still and look him right in the eyes as he gazed into hers, searchingly.
‘Your eyes look strange,’ he said, reaching out to take hold of her chin. ‘I have never seen anyone with such tiny pupils.’
For such a large man his touch was remarkably gentle. Particularly since he had every right to be angry with her for throwing that rock. And actually hitting him with it.
‘My eyes feel strange,’ she admitted in a shaky voice. The touch of his fingers on her chin felt strange, too. Strange in the sense that she would have thought, given all that had passed between them so far, she would want to recoil. But she didn’t. Not in the slightest. Because for some strange reason his fingers felt pleasant. Comforting.
Which was absurd.
‘My head is full of fog. Nothing makes sense,’ she said, giving her head a little shake in a vain attempt to clear it of all the nonsense and start thinking sensibly again. It shook his fingers clear of her chin. Which was a pity.
No, it wasn’t! She didn’t want to take his hand and put it back on her face, against her cheek, so that she could lean into it. Not one bit.
‘It is the same for me,’ he said huskily.
‘Is it?’ That seemed very unlikely. But then so did everything else that had happened today.
‘Yes. From the moment I awoke I could not summon the words I needed.’
Words. He was talking about words. Not wanting to put his hand back on her face.
‘They seem to flit away out of reach, leaving me floundering.’
‘It is my aunt and uncle who’ve flitted out of my reach,’ she said bitterly. ‘Leaving me floundering. Literally. And my legs don’t seem as if they’ve properly woken up yet today.’
‘And you really haven’t heard of anyone called Hugo?’
Just as she shook her head in denial her stomach growled. Rather loudly.
He looked down at it with a quirk to his lips that looked suspiciously like the start of a smile.
‘Oh, how unladylike!’ She wrapped her arms around her middle.
‘You sound as hungry as I feel,’ he said, placing his hands on his own stomach. ‘I didn’t have any breakfast.’
‘Nor me. But until my stomach made that noise I hadn’t thought about being hungry,’ she found herself admitting. ‘I’m too thirsty.’
‘I’m thirsty, too. And foggy-headed. And I don’t feel as though my limbs want to do my bidding, either. I’m generally held to be a good whip, but I’m having real trouble controlling that broken-down hack that’s harnessed to the gig. And what’s more...’ He took a breath, as though coming to a decision. ‘I don’t recall a thing about last night. Not after dinner anyway. Do you?’
She thought for a bit. Today had been so bizarre that she hadn’t done anything more than try to work her way through it. And that had been hard enough, without trying to cast her mind back to the day before.
‘I went up to my room directly after dinner,’ she said. ‘I remember starting to get ready for bed, and Aunt Charity bringing me some hot milk which she said would help me sleep...’
A coldness took root in her stomach.
‘After that,’ she continued as a horrible suspicion began to form in her mind, ‘I don’t remember anything until I woke up next to you.’
‘Then it seems clear what happened,’ he said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand to her. ‘She drugged you and carried you to my room.’
‘No. No.’ She shook her head as he pulled her to her feet. ‘Why would she do such a horrid thing?’
‘I wonder if she knows Hugo,’ he mused. Then he fixed her with a stern look. ‘Because if Hugo isn’t behind this...’ he waved his free hand between the pair of them ‘...then we’re going to have to find another explanation. You will have to have a serious think about it on the way.’
‘On the way where?’
He hadn’t let go of her hand after helping her up, and she hadn’t made any attempt to tug it free. So when he turned and began to stride back to the gig she simply trotted along beside him.
‘On the way to Tadburne,’ he said, handing her up into the seat. ‘Where we are going to get something to eat in a respectable inn, in a private parlour, so that we can discuss what has happened and what we plan to do about it.’
She liked the sound of getting something to eat. And the discussing of plans. But not of the private parlour. Now that he’d let go of her hand she could remember that he was really a total stranger. A very disreputable-looking stranger, in whose bed she’d woken up naked that morning.
But what choice did she have? She was hungry, and cold, and she had not the means to do anything about either condition since Aunt Charity had vanished with all her possessions. She didn’t even have the small amount of pin money she was allowed. It had been in her purse. Which was in her reticule. The reticule she’d last seen the night before, when she’d tucked it under her pillow for safekeeping.
Oh, why hadn’t she thought to go to the bed in that empty room and see if her reticule was there? At least she’d have a few shillings with which to... But there her mind ran blank. What good would a few shillings be at a time like this?
But at least she would have had a clean handkerchief.
Though it wouldn’t have been clean now anyway. She’d have had to use it to mop up the blood. And then, if she’d needed one for herself later, she’d have had to borrow one from him anyway.
Just as she was now having to borrow his jacket, which he’d stripped off and sort of thrust at her, grim-faced.
‘Thank you,’ she said, with as much penitence as she could