Come on, he thought, in her general direction. Choose anything and I will answer to it.
‘It is John,’ she said.
He tried to contain his surprise, for she had chosen the single most common name in the world. There was something disappointing about the fact that it fit him so well. He glared at the insolent cit. ‘And if I were to give you leave, you would call her Miss Hendricks. But I do not. My dear?’ He held out a hand to her, and when she took it without hesitation, he pulled her across the body of the carriage into the seat beside him.
The carriage gave a sudden jolt and she landed half in his lap. The sudden contact was most pleasant, and, for a second, his thoughts were in no way filial. But not a hint of answering blush tinted her pale skin and she grabbed the strap beside the door and sorted herself into the seat between him and the opposite window without further assistance.
To hide his momentary confusion, he removed his spectacles and wiped the lenses on the corner of his handkerchief. When he replaced them, he could see that the woman next to him was bristling in outrage. But she was directing it at the other passenger, glaring in triumph across the coach at her adversary.
You are beautiful when you are angry. It was a foolish sentiment, even when true. Knowing the trouble that they could cause, what sane man wanted to make a woman angry? But in her case, there was a strength and energy in her that was accented by her indignation. John had a moment’s desire to reach out and touch her, running a hand lightly over her back as one might, when soothing the feathers of a flustered falcon.
‘My apologies,’ the man muttered, giving John a wary look. ‘If that was the way of it, you’d have best spoken sooner.’
‘Or you could have found your manners before speaking at all,’ John said back, annoyed at the cheek of the man and at himself for his foolish thoughts. Then he settled back into his seat, pretending to doze again.
Beside him, the woman removed a small watch from her reticule, and looked uneasily from it to the shadows of the landscape passing by their window. In the flashes of lightning, he saw violent movement, as though the trees and hedges were being whipped about by the wind. The swaying of the coach increased. Though it was barely midnight, it appeared that their journey was about to take an unfortunate turn.
Chapter Two
The rain had been falling steadily for hours, and Drusilla Rudney fought the desire to remove the coaching schedule from her reticule to try to catch a glimpse of the stops in the guttering lamplight. They had been forced on several occasions already to get out of the coach and walk in the pouring rain as the horses navigated difficult stretches of wet road. That last time, as they’d stumbled in the dark and the gale, she had managed to raise her head to look and she’d seen the difficulty the coachman had in controlling the frightened animals, who rolled their eyes behind their blinders, trying to watch the storm. But he had managed to calm them again and shouted to the passengers to hurry and take their seats so that they could start again. And now the three of them sat, damp and unhappy in their clothes, waiting for the next stop and hoping that there would be enough time for a hot drink.
Since the fat man who had bothered her could not manage to keep quiet, he had speculated briefly with the other man about the likelihood of a delay. But her pretend brother had said not a word to her since pulling her down to sit beside him.
She remembered the way the fat man beside her had pressed his leg against her skirts, and then imagined how much worse it might have got, had Mr Hendricks not intervened. She had never been this far from home without some kind of chaperon. And although she had known the risks to her reputation, she had not thought that they might involve actual harm to her person. Leaving in haste had been foolish. But common sense had been overcome by her fears for Priscilla. Even now, her sister might be experiencing similar dangers.
She did her best to disguise the involuntary shudder that had passed through her at the thought, hoping that the two men would think it a reaction to sitting in rain-dampened clothing. It would be unwise to reveal her fear in front of a man who had already showed himself willing to prey upon a vulnerable woman. She glared at the merchant across the coach.
She should consider herself lucky that all men were not like him. If they were forced to spend a few hours at the next coaching inn, she would try to pull Mr Hendricks aside and thank him for his aid. Maybe she could even explain some portion of her story, although there was nothing about him that made her think he wished to know her reasons for travelling alone. He had been rather slow to take an interest when she’d needed his help. But now that he had given it, she wished to know if she could call on him again.
She’d heard the slur in his speech when he’d bought his ticket. But his tone had been mild enough. And the spectacles he wore gave a scholarly cast to his features. She’d decided he was a man of letters, perhaps studying for holy orders. Although he was clearly lost to drink, there was something in his face and his mannerisms that made him seem kind and trustworthy. Thus, he would be easily manipulated, even by one as inexperienced with men as she. Of course, Priscilla would have had the man dancing like a puppet by now. But Dru had assumed that his sense of chivalry would bring him promptly to heel in defence of any lady. Instead, it had taken an actual, physical goad.
Of course, now that she could see him from close up, there was a touch of the disapproving schoolmaster about the set of his mouth. She wondered if he thought her fast for travelling alone. Not that he had any right to cast aspersions. When he had first entered the carriage, he had brought with him a cloud of gin and had fallen rather heavily into his seat as though his legs would be taking him no farther for quite some time. But he had been nipping regularly from his flask and had refilled it with brandy at the last stop.
She held the book of sermons before her, wondering if he was more in need of it than she. If he was a clergyman of some kind as she’d suspected, then he had best see to his own weaknesses before correcting others. He had fallen in with her lie quickly enough, when he could just as easily have defended her with the truth. A liar and a drunkard, then. But compared to the coarseness of the other man, he seemed quite harmless.
Yet when she’d almost fallen to the floor of the coach, his response had proved that his reflexes were excellent and his arm strong. He had sorted her back into the other seat as though she weighed nothing. And the thighs on which she’d accidently sat had been hard from riding.
It was a conundrum. She’d have expected him to forgo the saddle for a pony cart, as would befit someone of his nature. The physical prowess he seemed to possess was wasted on a man of letters. And there was something about his eyes, when he had removed his glasses in that moment when he’d cleaned them. The clarity of the colour in them was quite handsome. They were a strange, light brown that shimmered protean gold in the lamplight. They were the eyes of a man who had seen much, balked at little and feared nothing.
But the man of action she’d imagined, who would ride like a centaur and fight like a demon, was just a trick of the light. He was gone with the return of the spectacles, leaving a drunken cleric in the seat beside her.
At the next inn, the guard shouted for them to leave the vehicle. And they alighted, meaning to stretch their legs and twist the kinks from their backs, only to step down ankle deep into the puddles in the courtyard. The wings of the inn sheltered them from the worst of the wind, but gusts of it still tore at their clothes, making the short scurry to the front door a difficult trip. But her unwilling protector raised his topcoat over their heads to offer some shelter from the worst of it and shepherded her quickly into the public room. In the doorway behind them, the driver was deep in conversation with the innkeeper. When she glanced out of the window, the team was being unhitched from the coach and led away, but there were no replacements stamping eagerly on the flags, waiting to be harnessed.
‘What—?’ she said to the man who might be called Hendricks.
He held up a hand to silence her, clearly eavesdropping on the conversation of the guard with some other