seriously at all the gentlemen-and there were many of them despite the fact that she was now five and twenty and always had been ugly-who would jump through hoops if she were merely to hint that marriage to her might be the prize. Being single at such an advanced age really was no fun for a lady. The trouble was that she was not wholly convinced that being married would be any better. And it would be too late to discover that it really was not after she had married. Marriage was a life sentence, her brothers were fond of saying-though two of the four had taken on that very sentence within the past few months.
Freyja awoke with a start some indeterminate time later when the door of her room opened suddenly and then shut again with an audible click. She was not even sure she had not dreamed it until she looked and saw a man standing just inside the door, clad in a white, open-necked shirt and dark pantaloons and stockings, a coat over one arm, a pair of boots in the other hand.
Freyja shot out of bed as if ejected from a fired cannon and pointed imperiously at the door.
'Out!' she said.
The man flashed her a grin, which was all too visible in the near-light room.
'I cannot, sweetheart,' he said. 'That way lies certain doom. I must go out the window or hide somewhere in here.'
'Out!' She did not lower her arm-or her chin. 'I do not harbor felons. Or any other type of male creature. Get out!'
Somewhere beyond the room were the sounds of a small commotion in the form of excited voices all speaking at once and footsteps-all of them approaching nearer.
'No felon, sweetheart,' the man said. 'Merely an innocent mortal in deep trouble if he does not disappear fast. Is the wardrobe empty?'
Freyja's nostrils flared.
'Out!' she commanded once more.
But the man had dashed across the room to the wardrobe, yanked the door open, found it empty, and climbed inside.
'Cover for me, sweetheart,' he said, just before shutting the door from the inside, 'and save me from a fate worse than death.'
Almost simultaneously there was a loud rapping on the door. Freyja did not know whether to stalk toward it or the wardrobe first. But the decision was taken from her when the door burst open again to reveal the innkeeper holding a candle aloft, a short, stout, gray-haired gentleman, and a bald, burly individual who was badly in need of a shave.
'Out!' she demanded, totally incensed. She would deal with the man in the wardrobe after this newest outrage had been dealt with. No one walked uninvited into Lady Freyja Bedwyn's room, whether that room was at Lindsey Hall or Bedwyn House or a shabby-genteel inn with no locks on the doors.
'Begging your pardon, ma'am, for disturbing you,' the gray-haired gentleman said, puffing out his chest and surveying the room by the light of the candle rather than focusing on Freyja, 'but I believe a gentleman just ran in here.'
Had he awaited an answer to his knock and then addressed her with the proper deference, Freyja might have betrayed the fugitive in the wardrobe without a qualm. But he had made the mistake of bursting in upon her and then treating her as if she did not exist except to offer him information-and his quarry. The unshaven individual, on the other hand, had done nothing but look at her-with a doltish leer on his face. And the innkeeper was displaying a lamentable lack of concern for the privacy of his guests.
'Do you indeed believe so?' Freyja asked haughtily. 'Do you see this gentleman? If not, I suggest you close the door quietly as you leave and allow me and the other guests in this establishment to resume our slumbers.'
'If it is all the same to you, ma'am,' the gentleman said, eyeing first the closed window and then the bed and then the wardrobe, 'I would like to search the room. For your own protection, ma'am. He is a desperate rogue and not at all safe with ladies.'
'Search my room?' Freyja inhaled slowly and regarded him along the length of her prominent, slightly hooked Bedwyn nose with such chilly hauteur that he finally looked at her-and saw her for the first time, she believed. 'Search my room?' She turned her eyes on the silent innkeeper, who shrank behind the screen of his candle. 'Is this the hospitality of the house of which you boasted with such bombastic eloquence upon my arrival here, my man? My brother, the Duke of Bewcastle, will hear about this. He will be interested indeed to learn that you have allowed another guest-if this gentleman is a guest-to bang on the door of his sister's room in the middle of the night and burst in upon her without waiting for a reply merely because he believes that another gentleman dashed in here. And that you have stood by without a word of protest while he makes the impudent, preposterous suggestion that he be allowed to search the room.'
'You were obviously mistaken, sir,' the landlord said, half hiding beyond the door frame though his candle was still held out far enough to shine into the room. 'He must have escaped another way or hidden somewhere else. I beg your pardon, ma'am-my lady, that is. I allowed it because I was afraid for your safety, my lady, and thought the duke would want me to protect you at all costs from desperate rogues.'
'Out!' Freyja said once more, her arm outstretched imperiously toward the doorway and three men standing there. 'Get out!'
The gray-haired gentleman cast one last wistful look about the room, the unshaven lout leered one last time, and then the innkeeper leaned across them both and pulled the door shut.
Freyja stared at it, her nostrils flared, her arm still outstretched, her finger still pointing. How dared they? She had never been so insulted in her life. If the gray-haired gentleman had uttered one more word or the unshaven yokel had leered one more leer, she would have stridden over there and banged their heads together hard enough to have them seeing wheeling stars for the next week.
She was certainly not going to recommend this inn to any of her acquaintances.
She had almost forgotten about the man in the wardrobe until the door squeaked open and he unfolded himself from within it. He was a tall, long-limbed young man, she saw in the ample light from the window. And very blond. He was probably blue-eyed too, though there was not quite enough light to enable her to verify that theory. She could see quite enough of him, though, to guess that he was by far too handsome for his own good. He was also looking quite inappropriately merry.
