‘Well, I suppose she might have done. I didn’t think it was anything more than hot milk at the time, but—’
‘How they managed to administer something similar to me is a bit of a puzzle,’ he said, cutting her off mid-sentence. ‘But let us assume they did. Once I lay sleeping heavily they carried you to my room, safe in the knowledge that there would be no witnesses to the deed since we were isolated up there.’
She shuddered. She couldn’t bear to think of Mr Murgatroyd touching her, doing who knew what to her while she was insensible. Oh, she hoped he’d left the room before her aunt had undressed her. At least she could be certain he hadn’t done that himself. Aunt Charity would never have permitted it.
‘Then, in the morning,’ Gregory continued, ‘they set up a bustle, pretending to search for you. They must have summoned the landlord and dragged him up all those stairs, attracting a crowd on the way so that they could all witness you waking up naked in my bed.’
‘There is no need to look so pleased about it. It was horrid!’
His expression sobered.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘But you see I have led a very dull, regulated sort of existence until very recently. Suffocatingly boring, to be perfectly frank. And I had come to the conclusion that what I needed was a bit of a challenge. What could be more challenging than taking on a pair of villains trying to swindle an heiress out of her inheritance? Or solving the mystery of how we ended up naked in the same bed together?’
She wished he wouldn’t keep harping on about the naked part of it. How did he expect her to look him in the eye or hold a sensible conversation when he kept reminding her that she’d been naked?
She had to change the subject.
‘Pardon me for pointing it out,’ she said, indicating his black eye and then the grazes on his knuckles, ‘but you don’t look to me as though you have been leading what you call a dull sort of existence.’
‘Oh, this?’ He chuckled as he flexed his bruised hands. ‘This was the start of my adventure, actually. I’d gone up to Manchester to deal with a...ah...a situation that had come to my attention. I was on my way...er...to meet someone and report back when I...’ He looked a bit sheepish. ‘Well, to be perfectly honest I took a wrong turning. That’s why I ended up at that benighted inn last night. So Hugo couldn’t have done it!’ He slapped the table. ‘Of course he couldn’t.’ He smiled at her. ‘Well, that’s a relief. I shan’t have to hold him to account for what has happened to you. I don’t think I could have forgiven him this.’
His smile faded. He gave her a look she couldn’t interpret, then glared balefully at his empty tankard.
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to take you to the place where I’ve arranged to meet him. Straight away.’
She wasn’t at all sure she liked the sound of that.
‘Excuse me, but I’m not convinced that is the right thing to do.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ He looked completely stunned. ‘Why should you not wish to go there?’
‘I know nothing about it, that’s why.’ And precious little about him, except that he had recently been in a fight and was being downright shifty about what it had been about.
Oh, yes—and she knew what he looked like naked.
‘It is a very comfortable property in which a relative of mine lives,’ he snapped. ‘A sort of aunt.’
She gave an involuntary shiver.
‘You need not be afraid of her. Well...’ He rubbed his nose with his thumb. ‘I suppose some people do find her impossible, but she won’t behave the way your aunt did—I can promise you that.’
‘I would rather,’ she said tartly, ‘not have anything to do with any sort of aunt—particularly one you freely admit is impossible.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he said firmly, ‘she can provide you with clean clothes, and we will both enjoy good food and comfortable beds. In rooms that nobody will invade,’ he said with a sort of muted anger, ‘the way they did at The Bull. And then, once we are rested and recovered, I can contact people who will be able to get to the bottom of the crime being perpetrated against you.’
‘Will you? I mean...thank you very much,’ she added doubtfully.
If he really did mean to take her to the home of a female relative who lived in some comfort, even if she was a touch difficult to get on with, and contact people on her behalf to right the wrongs done her, then it was the best thing she could think of.
It was just that coming from a man with a black eye and bruised knuckles it sounded a bit too good to be true.
He shot her a piercing glance. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I am sorry,’ she said, a touch defiantly. ‘But I am having trouble believing anything that has happened today. But if you say you mean to help me, then I shall...’ She paused, because she’d been brought up to be very truthful. ‘I shall try to believe you mean it.’
‘Of course I mean it. Your guardians picked the wrong man to use as their dupe when they deposited you in my bed. I will make them rue the day they attempted to cross swords with me.’ He flexed his bruised, grazed hands.
‘Did you make them rue the day as well?’
She’d blurted out the question before she’d even known she was wondering about it. She looked up at him in trepidation. Only to discover he was smiling. True, it wasn’t what she’d call a very nice sort of smile. In fact it looked more like the kind of expression she imagined a fox would have after devastating a henhouse.
‘Yes, I made a whole lot of people sorry yesterday,’ he said.
She swallowed. Reached for the teapot.
Something about the way she poured her second cup of tea must have betrayed her misgivings, because his satisfied smile froze.
‘I don’t generally go about getting into brawls, if that’s what you’re afraid of,’ he said.
‘I’m not afraid.’
He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you were. Look...’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’ll tell you what happened, and why it happened, and then you can judge for yourself.’
She shrugged one shoulder, as if she didn’t care, and took a sip of her tea. This time, thankfully, it had much more flavour.
‘It started with a letter from a man who worked in a...a manufactory. In it he described a lot of double-dealing, as well as some very unsavoury behaviour towards the female mill workers by the foreman, and he asked the owner of the mill whether he could bear having such things going on in his name. He couldn’t,’ he said, with a decisive lift to his chin. ‘And so I went to see if I could get evidence of the wrongdoing, and find a way to put a stop to it.’
So he was employed as a sort of investigator? Which explained why he had a secretary. Someone who would help him keep track of the paperwork while he went off doing the actual thief-taking. It also explained why he was reluctant to speak of his trade. He would have to keep a lot of what he did to himself. Or criminals would see him coming.
She took a sip of tea and suddenly saw that that couldn’t be the right conclusion. Because it sounded like rather an exciting sort of way to make a living. And he’d said he had lived a dull, ordered existence. She sighed. Why did nothing make any sense today?
‘I soon found out that it wouldn’t be possible to bring the foreman to trial for what he was doing to the women under his power, because not a one of them would stand up in court and testify. Well, you couldn’t expect it of them.’