‘Aunt Charity said you looked like a housebreaker,’ she couldn’t help saying. Though she clapped her hand over her mouth as soon as she’d said it.
He frowned. ‘It’s funny, but I would never have thought I’d be keen to tell anyone about Wragley’s. But you blurting out things the way you just did... Perhaps it’s something to do with the drug we were given. We can’t help saying whatever is on our minds.’
‘I...suppose that might be it,’ she said, relieved that he wasn’t disposed to take her to task for being so rude. ‘Although...’ She paused.
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ she said with a shake of her head. She didn’t want to admit that for some reason she felt as though she could say anything to him. ‘You were telling me about how you tried to find the second set of books?’
‘Oh, yes. Well, long story short, we found them. Only the night watchman saw the light from our lantern, called for help and came after us. It was touch and go for a while, but eventually we got clean away,’ he ended with a grin.
So even if he wasn’t a professional thief-taker, he certainly enjoyed investigating crime and seeing villains brought to book. A man who could speak of such an adventure with that look of relish on his face would be perfect for helping her untangle whatever it was that Aunt Charity and Uncle Murgatroyd thought they’d achieved last night.
Someone who could fight for her. Defend her. And he was certainly capable of that. She only had to think of all those bulging muscles. The ones she’d seen that morning as he’d gone stalking about the bedroom, stark naked and furious.
Oh, dear, there was that word again. The one that made her blush, since this time it wasn’t just her own nudity she was picturing but his.
She pushed it out of her mind. Instantly it was replaced by the memory of him handing her his jacket. And that after she’d almost brained him with a rock.
Which helped her come to a decision.
‘I should like you to make Aunt Charity and Uncle Murgatroyd sorry, too. Because I think you are right. I think they are trying to take my money. Trying to make me disappear altogether, actually. If it was them who put me in your room—’
‘Who else could it have been?’
‘I know, I know. You’re clearly very good at working out how criminals think. It still isn’t very pleasant to accept it. But...’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Very well, when they put me in your room,’ she said, although her stomach gave a little lurch, ‘they probably did take advantage of the way the rooms were isolated up there—particularly after they saw the way you looked and behaved at dinner. I do think they believed that of all the men in that place you looked the most likely to treat me the worst.’
‘For that alone I should break them. How dare they assume any such thing?’
And that was another thing. He had a vested interest in clearing his own name, too. Now that she’d heard the lengths to which he’d gone to right the wrongs being done to the women at that mill, she felt much better about going to the house of which he’d spoken. They would need somewhere to go and hatch their plans for...not revenge. Justice. Yes, it was only justice she wanted.
‘So you will help me track them down and make them pay?’
Make them pay? ‘I most certainly will,’ he said.
He would set his people on their trail. He would tell them it was their top priority. From what Prudence had told him so far, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d actually been heading for Liverpool. Possibly with a view to leaving the country altogether, if her uncle had actually swindled her out of all her money. On the off-chance that the case was not as bad as all that, he’d make sure his staff found out everything about their business dealings, too, and gained control of any leases or mortgages they had. He would throw a cordon around them so tight that they wouldn’t be able to sneeze without his permission.
And if it turned out that they had stolen Prudence’s inheritance, and hadn’t had the sense to get out of the country while they could, then he would crush them. Utterly.
Just then the door opened and the landlord came in.
‘Next coach’s due in any time now,’ he said without preamble. ‘Time for you to make off.’
Gregory deliberately relaxed his hands, which he’d clenched into fists as he’d been considering all the ways he could make Prudence’s relatives pay for what they’d done. ‘Bring me the reckoning, then,’ he said. ‘I am ready to depart.’
He turned to see Prudence eyeing him warily.
‘Hand me my purse, would you, niece? It’s in my pocket.’
She continued to stare at him in that considering way until he was forced to speak to her more sternly.
‘Prudence, my purse.’
She jumped, but then dug her hand into one of the pockets of the jacket he’d lent her. And then the other one. And then, instead of handing over his purse, she pulled out the stocking he’d thrust in there and forgotten all about. She gazed at it in bewilderment.
Before she could start asking awkward questions he darted round the table, whipped it out of her hand and thrust it into his waistcoat. And then, because she appeared so stunned by the discovery of one of her undergarments that she’d forgotten to hand him his purse, he decided he might as well get it himself.
It wasn’t there. Not in the pocket where he could have sworn he’d put it. A cold, sick swirl of panic had him delving into all the jacket pockets, several times over. Even though it was obvious what had happened.
‘It’s gone,’ he said, tamping down the panic as he faced the truth. ‘We’ve been robbed.’
‘Ho, robbed, is it?’ The landlord planted his fists on his ample hips. ‘Sure, and you had such a fat purse between you when you come in.’
‘Not a fat purse, no,’ said Gregory, whirling round from his crouched position to glare at the landlord. ‘But sufficient. Do you think I would have asked for a private parlour if I hadn’t the means to pay for it?’
‘What I think is that there’s a lot of rogues wandering the highways of England these days. And one of them, or rather two,’ he said, eyeing Prudence, ‘have fetched up here.’
‘Now, look here...’
‘No, you look here. I don’t care what story you come up with, I won’t be fooled, see? So you just find the means to pay what you owe or I’m sending for the constable and you’ll be spending the night in the roundhouse.’
There was no point in arguing. The man’s mind was closed as tight as a drum. Besides, Gregory had seen the way he’d dealt with that bunch of customers in the tap. Ruthlessly and efficiently.
There was nothing for it. He stood up and reached for the watch he had in his waistcoat pocket. A gold hunter that was probably worth the same as the entire inn, never mind the rather basic meal they’d just consumed. The very gold hunter that Hugo had predicted he’d be obliged to pawn. His stomach contracted. He’d already decided to go straight to Bramley Park rather than wait until the end of the week. But that was his decision. Pawning the watch was not, and it felt like the bitterest kind of failure.
‘If you would care to point me in the direction of the nearest pawn shop,’ he said, giving the landlord a glimpse of his watch, ‘I shall