‘Yes... Well, he thought his family would take me in. Only they wouldn’t. They were as angry over him marrying a girl who “smelled of the shop” as Grandpapa Biddlestone was that his daughter had run off with a sinner. So they sent me north. At least Mama’s family took responsibility for me. Even though they did it grudgingly. Besides, by then Aunt Charity had also angered Grandpapa Biddlestone over her own choice of husband. Or at least the way he’d turned out. Even though he was of the Methodist persuasion he was, apparently, “a perpetual backslider”. Though that is neither here nor there. Not any more.’
‘By which you mean what?’
‘He’d been dead for years before I even reached England. I cannot think why I mentioned him at all.’
‘Nor can I believe I just said, By which you mean what.’
‘It doesn’t matter that your speech isn’t very elegant,’ she said consolingly. ‘I knew what you meant.’
The sort of snorting noise he made in response was very expressive, if not very polite.
‘Well anyway, Grandpapa decided I should live with Aunt Charity until my father could make alternative arrangements for me, since she was a woman and I was of an age to need female guidance. Or that was what he said. She told me that Grandpapa didn’t want the bother of raising a girl child who couldn’t be of any use to him in his business.’
‘And why didn’t your father make those alternative arrangements?’
‘Because he died as well. Only a couple of years later.’
‘That makes no more sense than what I originally thought,’ he said in disgust.
‘What did you originally think?’
‘Never mind that,’ he said tersely. ‘I need to concentrate on the traffic now that we’re approaching Tadburne. This wretched animal—’ he indicated the horse ‘—seems to wish to challenge anything coming in the other direction, and I need to keep my wits about me—what little I appear to have remaining this morning—if you don’t want to get pitched into the road.’
She could understand that. She’d already noted that he was having increasing difficulty managing his horse the nearer they drew to the town she could see nestling in the next valley.
‘However,’ he said, ‘I should like you to consider a few things.’
‘What things?’
‘Well, firstly, why would your own aunt—your own flesh and blood—drug you, undress you, and deposit you in my bed? And, worse, abandon you in that inn after removing all your possessions, leaving you completely at the mercy of strangers? Because, Miss Prudence Carstairs, since you deny having any knowledge of Hugo and you seem to me to be a truthful person, then I feel almost sure that is what happened.’
‘You are wrong,’ Prudence said. ‘Aunt Charity is a pillar of the community. Positively steeped in good works. She couldn’t have done anything like that.’
Though why could she recall nothing after drinking that warm milk?
He made no answer.
It must have been because he was negotiating a tricky turn before going under the archway of an inn. The inn was, moreover, right on a busy crossroads, so that traffic seemed to be coming at them from all directions. It was concentration that had put the frown between his brows and made his mouth pull into an uncompromising line.
It wasn’t because he disagreed with her.
Of course he was wrong. Aunt Charity couldn’t possibly have done what he said.
Yet how else could she have ended up in bed with a stranger? Naked? She would never, ever have gone to his room of her own accord, removed every stitch of clothing, flung it all over the place, and then got into bed with him.
And the man denied having lured her there.
He brought the gig to a halt and called over an ostler.
Well, no, he hadn’t exactly denied it, she reflected as he got down, came round to her side and helped her from the seat. Because she hadn’t accused him of doing any luring. But from the things he’d said he seemed to think she’d been in some kind of conspiracy against him. And he was also unclear about what had happened last night after dinner. Claimed to have no recollection of how they’d wound up in bed together, either.
So what he was saying was that someone else must be responsible. Since she wasn’t. And he wasn’t.
Which left only her aunt.
And uncle.
Or this Hugo person he kept mentioning.
‘Come on,’ he said a touch impatiently.
She blinked, and realised she’d been standing still in the bustling inn yard, in a kind of daze, while she struggled with the horrid notion he’d put in her head.
‘Well, I want some breakfast even if you don’t,’ he said, turning on his heel and stalking towards the inn door.
Beast!
She had no choice but to trot along in his wake. Well, no acceptable choice anyway. She certainly wasn’t going to loiter in another inn yard, populated by yet more greasy-haired ostlers with lecherous eyes. And she did want breakfast. And she had no money.
When she caught up with him he was standing in the doorway to what looked like the main bar. Which was full of men, talking and swigging tankards of ale. It must be a market day for the place to be so busy and for so many men to look so inebriated this early.
‘Stay here,’ he growled, before striding across to the bar. ‘I want a private parlour,’ he said to the burly man in a stained apron who was presiding over the bar. ‘For myself and...’ he waved a hand in her direction ‘...my niece.’
His niece? Why on earth was he telling the landlord she was his niece?
The answer came to her as soon as she looked at the burly tapster and saw the expression on his face as he eyed their appearance. Bad enough to have been called a trollop by the landlady of the last inn she’d been inside. At least if people thought she was this man’s niece it gave an acceptable explanation for them travelling together, if not for the way they were dressed.
‘And breakfast,’ her ‘uncle’ was saying, as though completely impervious to what the burly man might be thinking about his appearance—or hers. ‘Steak, onions, ale, bread and butter, and a pot of tea.’
The burly man behind the bar looked at her, looked over the rowdy market-day crowd, then gave a sort of shrug.
‘Well, 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