He shot her a quick dark glance.
Her smiled broadened. ‘It is all right to seduce a woman of the lower classes, but a noble-born wench requires a different set of rules. Not because she is any better, but because her family has the power to do something about it.’
He stiffened. ‘You go too far, madam.’
‘Do I? Well, rest your mind easy, your lordship. I wouldn’t marry you, if you were the last single man on this earth. What would I want with some useless nobleman, only interested in horses and gambling and the cut of his coat?’ She glared at his exquisitely cut driving coat with its layer of capes and gold buttons, at the artfully placed whip points in the lapel, and did a bit of lip curling of her own. ‘All right for a bit of fun in bed, but about as much use as tits on a bull, as Grandfather would say.’
His jaw dropped. ‘Good God, woman. Your grandfather should have been shot for talking like that to a gently bred female.’
Smile fixed, she straightened in her seat. ‘Get it through your thick skull. I am not gently bred just because I am related to the Earl of Chepstow. Draycotts are common hard-working people. My grandfather watched sheep from the age of four until he was ten. My father worked in the mill all his life. If I had been a boy, I would have worked there, too.’ Instead of going to Mrs Driver’s Academy for the daughters of gentlefolk and finding out exactly how unacceptable she was to the upper classes of England.
‘Don’t act insulted,’ he said stiffly. ‘You know you should have told me.’
She pulled all the pieces of her that seemed to have scattered themselves in the air around her—the pride, the hurt, the anger—and settled them back where they belonged with one deep breath. She clenched her hands together inside her muff and willed herself to feel nothing.
‘I am not acting insulted,’ she said, her voice deadly calm. ‘Angry, yes, but since we are almost at the Muddy Duck, I suggest we make our enquiries and then return to Draycott House. You may continue your journey to Durn immediately.’
He frowned. ‘You will wait in the carriage. I will make enquiries.’
‘Certainly not. If someone is out to harm me, I want to know who it is.’
The curricle pulled under the arch and into the small courtyard. An ostler ran out to take the horses’ heads.
‘If we are to carry off this betrothal,’ he spat the word, ‘in the eyes of the world, you will remain in the carriage. Any inn laying claim to the sobriquet of the Muddy Duck is no fit place for a respectable woman.’
‘I thought we had already agreed I am not the slightest bit respectable,’ she said. Blast. That sounded bitter when she had intended it to be simply sarcasm.
Tonbridge frowned at her. ‘If you are my fiancée, then you are respectable. Do as I bid, Merry, or I promise I will go right back to Broadoaks, swear it was all a hum, a lie, so that you could get your own way, and leave you to face him and his friends.’
She gasped at his perfidy. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Would you care to test that assumption?’
She stared at the granite line of his jaw and into the dark of his eyes. No laughter. No yielding. They’d won the day with regard to the house because of him, because Broadoaks wouldn’t risk the enmity of one of the most powerful landowners in England. One word and Tonbridge would ruin it all. It was blackmail.
She would not be blackmailed.
Caro had been right to caution her about involving him in her problems. And now there was no going back without losing all the ground she’d gained on Caro’s behalf. She gritted her teeth. There were other ways to show him he wasn’t going to push her around. She awarded him a tight smile. ‘As you wish.’
‘Good.’ Charlie jumped down. ‘Turn them around,’ he called out to the ostler. ‘I won’t be more than a minute or two.’
Merry watched him disappear inside the inn in a swirl of black coat. A three-storey building built in Tudor times, the inn looked tired, its roofs sagging and covered in moss. The curricle lurched as the man manoeuvred the horses in the tight space.
A hollow feeling filled her chest. Hurt because he assumed the worst.
Drat him. Why would she, a Draycott, wish to marry him, just because he was heir to a dukedom? He was judging her by his own standards.
A pang of realisation turned her stomach over. Naturally it would make him look bad if the betrothal became public. If she cried off, people would wonder why a low-class woman hadn’t found him worthy. Was that why he’d been so angry? Or was it because people would believe he had actually asked for her hand?
Her. Common as muck, Merry Draycott.
The latter. Definitely the latter. The emptiness seemed to grow.
The carriage ceased moving and Merry watched the door through which he had entered. Would he find out who had damaged her carriage? Lord, she hoped so, then he would go and leave her in peace. She winced. The locals were unlikely to tell tales to a stranger. Perhaps Prentice would have been a better choice for this task. She’d speak to him the moment he arrived tomorrow with his report on the mill.
He couldn’t have done anything with Mr Broadoaks, though. Clearly only a duke or his blasted heir could persuade the wily old mill owner to go against the indomitable Maria Broadoaks.
Minutes had passed. Where was he?
She hated waiting. Hated not knowing what was going on. She grabbed the side of the carriage and jumped down. ‘Back in a moment,’ she said to the ostler.
The courtyard needed a good sweep. If it was her yard, she’d see it done, too. She glared at the ostler, who appeared not to notice, and picked her way around the dung. The door opened before she could put her hand on the latch.
A frowning Charlie took in her presence. ‘I told you to wait in the carriage.’
‘You’ve been gone half an hour.’
He grabbed her elbow. ‘That’s because it takes time to get questions answered.’
She didn’t like the grim note in his voice. ‘What did you find out?’
‘I’ll tell you once we are on the road, as I promised.’
She glared at him.
‘Someone ought to have taken a birch twig to you as a child,’ he muttered.
Her lip curled. ‘What makes you think they didn’t?’
His eyes widened. ‘Damn it, Merry.’
Now what did that mean?
Back in the curricle and heading back for Draycott House, Charlie couldn’t stop wondering who could possibly have beaten Merry. While she was utterly infuriating, and had put him in an impossible position with regard to her family, he really couldn’t bear the thought.
‘Well?’ she said.
The anger simmering beneath the surface of his skin would have to wait. The current problem required all his attention. He formulated what he had learned into some sort of order.
‘Don’t sweeten the medicine,’ she said.
He huffed out a breath. ‘The landlord said someone got the men stirred up the night of the fire. A small group of them in the corner were muttering about jobs being lost. Men who haven’t worked for a very long time. They blame it on the changes in the mills, the new machines. One moment it was the usual complaints and the next a mob ready for mischief.’
‘Did he recognise the ringleader?’
‘He said not.’
‘Did you believe him?’
Charlie made a wry face. ‘I offered him