The coach travelled as swiftly as it could over snow-covered hills; but to Charles, with his head splitting, the ride seemed interminable. He could not remember the last time he had been so overcome by a headache that every dip in the road caused him agony. His companion, however, appeared not to feel all the jerks that tortured him. She dozed snugly on her bench and remained quiet, even after the sun disappeared over the bleak horizon and the coach was plunged into darkness.
By this time, they had stopped twice for horses already, but on neither occasion had Charles stepped down for refreshment, nor had he offered Miss Davenport any. His anxiety to get to London had increased with each mile, and every stab in his head only served to strengthen his sense of urgency. The enormity of the scandal that would certainly follow this escapade burgeoned in his mind until he was convinced his whole career would be ruined by it. That Miss Davenport seemed blissfully unaware of the damage she had done to his prospects did not improve his temper.
Eventually, the call he had expected from Timothy floated down from the box. “Shall I stop at the next village, sir?"
Charles lowered his window and felt a blast of cold air that made him wince. “How bad is it?"
“It's that bad, sir. Even wif a lantern, I don't think I'll see me own nose much longer. I'd fear to cross the moors in the dark."
Charles sighed. “Push them as far as Brough, if you can."
“Aye, sir."
“Pardon me, Lord Wroxton.” Miss Davenport spoke hesitantly across from him. “But are you particularly known in Appleby, sir?"
“No.” Charles realized that in the past four hours he had not given her one chance to step down. A lady might very well feel the need to stop more often, and if that were the case, she had been exceedingly stoic. The awareness of his own thoughtlessness made him feel guilty; but he was too annoyed with her to let guilt soften his tone.
“I had thought we should make as much haste to London as possible,” he said, trying not to clench his teeth. “But if you have needs that must be met sooner, I shall certainly give the order to stop.” Not a gracious way of putting it, he thought, but he trusted that would not stop such a forward chit from demanding what she wanted.
After a diffident pause, she surprised him by saying, “It is not that I require anything in particular, and I quite understand the need to hurry. It is simply that I am rather known in Brough."
“Good God!” Charles said, unable to help himself.
“Precisely, sir. Brough was one of the stops we were forced to make on our journey northward. And by then, you see, I was quite convinced that I wanted to return. It was only the knowledge of my own blame that kept me from making a fearful scene in the inn there. I could not very well expose Geoffrey to public insults.
“But if we stop there, too,” she continued in an apologetic voice, “and I appear with quite a different gentleman at my side, I'm afraid I shall acquire something of a bandbox reputation, indeed."
Charles swallowed the exclamations that rose to his lips. With his head pounding, he had not reflected on all the hazards likely to face him on this journey. He had never thought that they must avoid, at all costs, not only the inns where he habitually stayed, but also the ones in which Miss Davenport had stopped with her erstwhile fiancé. With little hope, he wondered what comfort would be left to them.
Without another word to her, he lowered the window again and called up to his coachman, “I have changed my mind, Timothy. I want you to stop in Appleby, after all!"
“Very good, yer lordship.” Timothy sounded so relieved that Charles was reminded of how disagreeable this trip must have been for his coachman, as well. At least he and Miss Davenport had four walls to shelter them from the north wind and furs to keep out the worst of the cold. But poor Timothy had nothing but his layered capes and rugs. He must be nearly frozen by now.
These thoughts reconciled Charles to the need to stop even more than the welcome prospect of getting treatment for the pain in his head.
Miss Davenport's voice came again from the dark. “Have you given any thought to how we should present ourselves, Lord Wroxton?"
Charles grimaced wryly. “I'm afraid I have not, Miss Davenport. But with my crest on my carriage, I can hardly present myself as anyone other than who I am."
“Precisely what I was thinking, my lord,” she said. And with rather excessive cheerfulness, Charles thought. “And if I might make a few suggestions, I think we may overcome any suspicion of our circumstances."
“Pray go ahead, Miss Davenport. I am all ears. I trust you shall inform me of any other villages we must avoid on our journey, as well."
Ignoring the irony in his tone, she said, “Willingly, my lord. Well, as I was saying, I think it would be best if we said I was your cousin, Louisa, and you were escorting me home for Christmas when our baggage coach broke down outside Carlisle.
“I considered being your niece,” she confided, “but I hardly think that would serve."
Charles gave a sardonic laugh. “Hardly,” he said, “when every rake-shame in England uses that feeble relationship to cover his liaisons."
“Do they?” She sounded most impressed with his knowledge. “I did not know. I was thinking merely that it would be possible for you to be my uncle, but highly unlikely. How old are you, in fact?"
“I am six and twenty. But what has that to say to anything?"
“If I am to be your cousin, Lord Wroxton, I shall have to know much more about you than your age! I shall have to address you by your Christian name, and you shall have to remember to call me Louisa. You mustn't think about offending me."
“I shall endeavour not to worry about offending you, Miss Davenport. And what else, in your opinion, must I do or not do?"
A pause told him that his rudeness had not escaped her. Charles started to apologize, but her next words cut him off.
“I know you are vexed, Lord Wroxton,” she said in a subdued tone. “If I seem too imperious, it is because I fear deception is not one of your virtues. I hate to admit that it is one of mine; but the truth is, on my way northward, I learned quite a bit about the sort of dissimulation required on such a journey. And this one might be even more complicated."
“0h?” Charles felt a sinking in his stomach. “And why is that?"
“Because I have no baggage with me. Perhaps you did not notice."
Charles leaned his forehead on one hand and emitted a sigh. “No, I did not. How stupid of me."
Her tone was very understanding. “I daresay you did not have time to notice. But I had to leave my boxes at the inn to slip past Geoffrey. If I had carried even one of them, I should certainly have been remarked. As it was, the owner's wife thought I had gone to meet him at the blacksmith's shop.
“But now,” she said, “I begin to regret not having smuggled at least one gown out of my room. It's a pity, but there's nothing that can be done about it. It serves no purpose to look back."
“I suppose not,” Charles agreed, shaking his head hopelessly.
“Well, then, how shall we explain my lack of baggage? I think I have reasoned out a story, if you will listen."
“Carry on,” Charles said, thinking he knew now why she had been silent for so long. She must have had quite a bit of scheming to do.
When she continued, she sounded quite cheerful again-almost as if she were enjoying herself. “We shall say, then, if it pleases you, that my maid was injured in the coaching accident. And I was so distraught over her condition, that I quite forgot my own bags when we resumed our trip. We expect your servants to catch up with us on the morrow, at least, which is why we have elected to push on. My abigail, alas, shall not be able to join us."
“Your powers of invention truly amaze me,” Charles said.
He could almost hear her blush.
“Yes, it is deplorable, is it not, that I should show such a talent for lying. However, you must not think I do so under normal circumstances. This time, I have your reputation to protect as well as my own. You would hardly expect me to place principle above my concerns for it."
“You have my heartfelt gratitude,” Charles said, and earnestly meant it, though he knew his response sounded pettish. This headache had robbed him of his usual cordiality. “Is there anything else I should know?"
“Not that I can think of, my lord. If anything occurs to me, I shall inform you of it immediately."
“Please do."
“And you will contrive to call me Louisa, I hope?"
“I shall do my best to fulfill whatever role I am assigned, but I warn you I am not accustomed to play-acting."
“What a pity,” she said, and this time he thought he detected a touch of irony in her voice. “Then we shall have to confine your part to as few lines as possible. Just let me play the lead and I am sure we shall come about."
Charles fell silent, fuming at the rebuke in her tone, but his pain was so intense that he had little mind to reflect on his lack of manners now. The few miles to Appleby, which should have passed quickly, seemed an eternity. Timothy was forced to walk the horses the last many yards.
When finally they arrived, Charles directed him to pull up at The Bull and Cock, instead of The George, where he had once stayed, however many years ago.
The sound of their wheels alerted the innkeeper, who was surprised to find anyone travelling so long after dark. The crest on Charles's coach impressed him forcibly, however, so he listened to Louisa's brief explanations without protest. His inn was empty this time of year, and he was not likely to turn away such rich travellers as a marquess and his cousin. If he wondered why the marquess had stopped at his house instead of at The George, which enjoyed almost all the aristocratic custom coming this way, he did not comment. He bustled about with the baggage, enquiring which rooms their bags should be carried to.
“Put them in my cousin's room,” Louisa said. “It is a long story-rather tedious-but I have none of my things with me just now. We hope our servants will catch up with us before tomorrow. Perhaps your wife would lend me something for the night."
“I-I'll see, miss,” he stammered at the strange request. “She'll be reet happy to help ye, I'll warrant."
“Very good,” Louisa said unconcernedly. “But I hope you will give your attention to my cousin first. He is suffering with the headache. A large bowl of punch will be just what he needs."
On his way upstairs at the moment, Charles paused in surprise at her words. He had not said anything about his headache. It shamed him to think that she had noticed, pointing out as nothing else could how abominable his manners had been. But, he reflected, perhaps she had only made up a headache to deflect the innkeeper's questions. With Miss Davenport, it was impossible to know.
Whatever her motives, her suggestion of a warm punch was just what he had longed for. By the time he descended to their private parlour, the bowl was waiting for him, with a warm fire and a comfortable chair pulled up to it. Looking freshened, Louisa was standing before the hearth, her hair matching the colour of the flames. She stepped aside and urged him into the chair, then served him the punch with her own hands.
“Thank you,” he said self-consciously.
Louisa flashed him a smile. “Remember not to be too polite to me,” she whispered. “You're supposed to be my cousin, remember?"
“Were I your cousin,” he responded, managing a slight smile himself, “I should have been more polite than I was. You must forgive me."
“Not at all,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I could tell you had the headache. It would have been something to wonder at, indeed, had you maintained your temper this long.” She retired to another chair and said, “For now, I suggest you close your eyes and forget that I am here. That is more likely to cure you than anything else."
A chuckle escaped him, but he did close his eyes. Privately, he doubted whether such a flighty young lady would be capable of staying silent for long, but Miss Davenport proved him wrong.
She sat in her chair without making a sound. The unaccustomed presence of another person should have made him tense, but instead he found her stillness vaguely comforting. The heat from the fire spread slowly through his clothing and warmed his frozen limbs, making them tingle. The innkeeper's excellent punch flowed through his veins and radiated a matching glow from inside. Warmed now, and relaxed, he managed to doze off and did not awake until the innkeeper had brought in their supper.
The man's wife helped him to serve it, and Louisa directed them as quietly as possible, only calling Charles when everything was set upon the table. If she had not been there to discourage him, the innkeeper would certainly have asked Charles to express his preferences for this or that meat or drink and driven him to distraction, when all he cared about was rest.
Louisa's selections appeared to be good ones: some local ham baked in a pasty, boiled potatoes and turnips, with cheese for their dessert. He complimented her on them as he joined her at table. The innkeeper and his wife had left them alone.
She looked up and smiled. “Telling faradiddles is not my only talent. I am quite accustomed to arranging meals, Cousin Charles."
Surprise at this form of address made him pause with his fork halfway to his mouth.
“There-I've said it,” she said with a self-conscious laugh. “The first jump is always the hardest. You might practise my name a time or two for when you will need it!"
He was recovered now. Still, it had seemed odd to hear his name on her lips. No one called him Charles, not even his mother.
“Louisa,” he ventured in kind, “I would be very much obliged if you would pass me the salt."
She reached for the cellar, her eyes twinkling. “I should think so indeed, Charles, if I were not under such heavy obligation to you.” She glanced at him teasingly. “As it is, however, I should think we could forget this one small favor!"
Charles grinned, embarrassed. He knew he must seem quite the prig to her. But then anyone must seem so to a girl who had recently eloped. He found it strange and unsettling to be sitting down to a private dinner with a young lady he hardly knew. The impropriety of it tied his tongue. Confound it! What was the proper way to talk to her?
Feeling his ill temper about to return, he changed the subject. “You said you were accustomed to arranging for meals?"
“Yes, and for crotchety people, too."
He glanced at her, wondering if she included him in this category. But she explained, “My aunt Davenport is an invalid, and the general is quite hard to please. He's gouty."
“General Davenport?” Charles nearly dropped his fork. “You mean, General Davenport is your uncle?"
“I'm afraid so. My great-uncle, to be precise."
Charles put his hand to his brow, but realized with surprise that his headache had gone. He looked up instead.
“Dare-devil Davenport?"
She nodded.
“Dreadnought Davenport?"
She smiled apologetically.
Charles concluded hopelessly, “He'll have my hide."
Louisa chuckled. “I shouldn't worry. He's mellowed considerably since his fighting days. The gout has had a beneficial effect upon his temper. He's not so daring anymore."
“Perhaps he's left that to you.” She had escaped from such a guardian, and yet she was returning to him without any particular sign of fear. Charles could not decide whether to be impressed by her courage or appalled by her foolhardiness. “How did you manage to run off without his knowing?"
“I used the drainpipe."
“Good Lord!"
Louisa arched her brows. “They are sturdier than you think. And I did not do it in broad daylight, so you needn't look so shocked!"
“But-” Charles felt the questions, which had brewed inside him all day, threaten to burst out. “But why did you do it? Did the general disapprove of this Geoffrey fellow?"
“The general does not want me to marry at all. He says I am too young."
“And are you?"
“Not at all! I am eighteen! So you see how unreasonable he is. He wasn't willing to bring me out this year, and he refuses to let me marry until I've been properly brought out."
“What's wrong with that?"
Louisa raised her eyes impatiently. “Nothing. I daresay you would agree with him."
Charles frowned in confusion. “But what a strange girl you are! Don't you wish to attend balls and assemblies?"
“Of course! I would enjoy them. But one can go to balls and assemblies just as easily after one is married, and there are many things one absolutely cannot do until one is married!"
“Good-” Charles choked on another oath. He could not truly believe that Louisa meant to imply what she seemed to be implying.
She looked at him, her eyes wide with innocence. He decided he must have misunderstood her. All the same, he judged it time to steer the conversation down a different path.
“And this Geoffrey fellow-he proved to be a fortune-hunter, did he?"
Louisa bit her lower lip and peered down at her napkin. “I'm afraid that may have been the case. You will say I was foolish, and rightly so, but I was anxious to be married, and I overlooked too much. I thought he did love me and that I should come to love him, as well. But on the first day out of London, my suspicions were aroused."
She gazed at him again, the blue of her eyes made deeper by dismay.
“Would you credit it, sir? Not once during that day did he even try to kiss me!"
Charles drew up, startled. A grin teased the corners of his mouth, but he suppressed it out of a sense of decorum. “Did it not occur to you, Louisa, that he might be demonstrating his respect for you?"
“Piffle!” said Louisa. “What respect should he show to a girl who had just eloped with him?"
Then, when he looked disapprovingly at her, she gave a little shrug. “Well, to be truthful, I did consider that at first, but it became quite clear to me that he was more interested in the horses our post boys were riding than in me. On the second day I asked him to turn back, but he would not hear of it. He said I was compromised, and we had better go through with it."
“Precisely as he should have thought."
“Yes, but by then, you see, I had come to the dreadful realization that I did not love him and never could. And far, far worse,” she added quietly, “I had decided that I did not want to marry someone I could not love."
A queer feeling rose in Charles's throat. He cleared it, but did not know what to say. Many things came to him: homilies, platitudes, the “I told you so” variety of lecture. He kept them to himself.
“Then it is fortunate you discovered this before you were married,” he said instead.
Louisa sighed. “I suppose so. But I do think passion is a necessary part of marriage. Don't you?"
Charles felt a curious heat stealing up his neck. “Well, I suppose-of course-That is-"
“I am still as determined as ever to marry,” Louisa continued, as if she had not heard him. “But now I have the greatest fear that I shall not manage it any time soon."
“Because the general is likely to turn up rough?"
“No, not that. By now, he's probably thinking good riddance, and will marry me to the first gentleman he can get to accept me.” She shook her head with a wistful look, and her red curls shimmered about her face in the firelight. “I was thinking that it might take rather a long time to fall in love."
Charles coloured. This was not the sort of conversation he should be having with a young lady alone in an inn.
He cleared his throat and put down his napkin.
“Perhaps we should retire so we can get a brisk start in the morning,” he suggested. Then, purposely ignoring the last thing she had said, he offered, “I shall think about your dilemma and see what solution I can come up with to appease your guardians."
Louisa deserved whatever punishment they would choose to mete out, of course. Still, having heard her confession, Charles felt it would be a pity if she were made to suffer excessively. She seemed appropriately contrite, though why she was in such a hurry to marry he could not fathom.
Some foolish notion, no doubt, which he would do better not to examine too closely.
But her contrition, which had so recently moved him to sympathy, vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. She stood when he did and met him with a sunny face.
“Do not concern yourself about the general,” she said, shaking her head. “I am not at all afraid of him-he is quite impressed by rank, you see. That is one reason I approached you, in particular. I heard one of the ostlers pointing you out as a marquess, and I thought that if you took me back to London, he would be more likely to forgive me sooner than if I had lit upon someone else."
Charles pressed his lips into a stern line, but Louisa merely batted her lashes at him.
“I shall bid you good-night,” he said in an offended tone. “If you require anything to make yourself more comfortable, I hope you will avail yourself of it immediately."
“Why, thank you, Charles. That is most gracious of you. But of course I have already mentioned that I shall pay my debts on our return. As a matter of fact,” she continued, “I have made a few purchases from the innkeeper's wife. You will be pleased to know that I have acquired a toothbrush and some powder and a comb. I shall have to see what sort of nightdress she comes up with, but if it is neither too worn nor too outrageous, I just might beg it of her, also."
This catalogue of her comforts did nothing to soothe Charles's temper. He ushered her out the door with a curt good-night. Then he stayed a few minutes longer in the parlour just so they would not be seen ascending the staircase at the same time.
He fumed for a bit, then decided this would only bring back his headache, and he was too grateful to have it gone to risk bringing on another. He stepped over to the fire and looked down at it. But the burning embers only served to remind him of Louisa's hair. Irritably, he thought that he might never enjoy a fire again without recalling his intrusive companion.
Then, with his usual sense of justice, he remembered how miserable he had been all day with his headache, and how helpful Louisa had been in ridding him of it. He doubted whether a night at Lord Northridge's residence would have cured him quite so fast. He would have been obliged to stay up, drinking until all hours and playing cards out of courtesy to his host. Not the sort of quiet he needed after such a gruelling trip, but necessary for politeness’ sake.
Louisa, on the other hand, had exhorted him not to be too polite to her. A strange thing for a lady to say, but most welcome under the circumstances. Charles smiled when he thought that he was far more likely to strangle her before this trip was over. And with reason.
A curious vision suddenly came to him, in which his hands were wrapped about her slender neck. But before he could throttle her, Louisa turned her blue eyes up at him and gave him a mischievous smile, and all at once Charles imagined that he could feel the smoothness of her skin beneath his fingertips.
He found himself wondering what curves were concealed beneath the silk of her spencer. The muslin of her gown had not succeeded in hiding a pleasant roundness to her hips and a slim pair of legs underneath.
A pleasant languor stole over him as he started to conjure more alluring images…
Abruptly, Charles shook himself, recalled his earlier concerns and cursed himself for such foolish wanderings. These were precisely the kind of thoughts he must not have under the circumstances. Better to turn his mind to what would be his best course of action on the morrow.
Christmas was only four days away. They needed three of them, at least, to get back to London. He should not waste time in useless-and dangerous-distractions.
He climbed the stairs to his room, confident that with his headache gone, some good notion would come to him by morning.