firmly removing her hands from his person. Repeatedly. The debauchery had been entirely hers.
She faced the door, heartbeats smacking against her protesting stomach. But there was nowhere to hide, and she did not particularly wish to hide now. Last night she had seized life and lived it with abandon—at least the parts she recalled. She would not now cower in a tiny bedchamber of a farmhouse somewhere in Shropshire for another moment, no matter the certain embarrassment she faced beyond.
She grasped the handle and went out.
It was a long, unadorned room boasting a wooden table flanked by benches and an enormous kitchen hearth before which an apron-clad woman and girl stood. Ramses popped up from a spot before the fire and padded over to her, wiggling happily. Standing at the far window, Mr. Yale turned.
He smiled his slight smile, nothing mocking or knowing or any different from before, and a little chord of dread unwound within her. She curtsied and nearly tumbled over. His smile lengthened only a bit. He bowed.
“Good day, ma’am. How are you feeling?”
“Not perfectly well.” Wretched. She smelled wretched too, her skin radiating a treacly acridness that made her nostrils curl. She probably looked wretched too. But the bedchamber had no mirror, which was for the best. Best not to know what he saw now.
Because what she saw was perfection. Even garbed in his usual black coat, breeches, and boots, a waistcoat of exquisite quality and crisp white shirt and cravat, he made her throat tighten up a bit. But today he looked different. His cheeks carried a glow even in the dimness of the gray day filtering through the windows, and his eyes seemed especially clear.
“Mrs. Dyer, may I make you known to our hostess, Mrs. Bates? And this is her eldest daughter, Miss Elizabeth Bates, whose excellent cooking we enjoyed for dinner today.”
“How do you do, ma’am?” The mistress of the house curtsied with a rustle of apron. “We’re sorry you’ve been poorly. I was ill when I carried my first, Tom, and Betsy here too.” She nodded confidingly. “It’ll be easier with the third.”
“Thank you for your hospitality.” She went forward, the steam from the pot rising to her nose and catching up her throat again. She swallowed tightly and smiled. “I cannot imagine what you must have thought when we were obliged to stop here in the thick of the night like that. You and your husband are very kind to have taken us in.”
“The good Lord says that when we invite in a stranger, we invite Him in, ma’am. And Mr. Dyer being so gentlemanly, we’d no worry.”
The girl bounced a curtsy, all coltish slenderness, the exact opposite of Diantha at that age. But exactly like her then in another manner: Elizabeth’s cheeks and brow were peppered with red spots. Each one seemed to radiate brighter as she blushed.
“I’m only Betsy, miss. And my cooking ain’t nearly so fine as the gentleman says.” She directed a starry- eyed glance at Mr. Yale.
“I am certain you must deserve the praise, Betsy.” Diantha had no doubt she’d directed precisely the same starry look at him last night. Because she was madly curious to see how he liked the flattery of awkward girls still in the schoolroom, she mustered the courage to glance at him. But he was not looking at Betsy, he was looking at her, and her gruesomely uncomfortable stomach did another flip-flop.
“My saints, Betsy,” Mrs. Bates said, setting down her cooking spoon and peering out the window. “You run out and close the gate before that goat escapes, and I’ll fetch the . . . eggs. Mrs. Dyer, I’ve set tea for you.” With a thoroughly transparent look at her daughter, she ushered Betsy out.
Mr. Yale moved toward a sturdy oaken sideboard against the wall that bore a set of cups and plates decorated with little pink flowers along the rims. “Can you tolerate food?”
“No.” She watched him pour from a jug into a cup and cross the room toward her. “But I will eat if you do.”
“While you slept away the day, I dined with our hosts.” He extended the cup. She accepted it and lifted it to her mouth.
“It seems we are to— Oh!” She spit the spirits back into the cup. “What do you think you’re doing giving me that? Do you want to see me cast up my accounts all over again?”
His brow lifted. “Not in the least.” He took her hand and urged it toward her mouth. “But you must trust me on this.”
“No.” She resisted. Her tongue was crimping at its base and her stomach turning over, and also his hand was quite firm and warm around hers. Resisting apparently meant that he would touch her, so she gladly resisted. Clearly she had learned nothing from the failure of her adventure into wicked waywardness the previous night.
He pushed back gently. Rather than spill the liquor on her gown, finally she set the rim to her mouth again.
“They call it taking a dose of the hair of the dog that bit you.” He stood close, looking down at her as she sipped. Her throat revolted, but she managed to swallow.
“An old superstition?” she managed between clenched teeth.
“It has a restorative effect.”
She released the empty cup back into his hand. “I cannot believe you do that all the time. What I mean to say is, it was . . . uncomfortable. No wonder you’ve decreased a stone since last I saw you.”
“I’ve not been sick since I was a boy.”
“You haven’t?”
“A man learns to hold his drink if he is wise.”
“Did you really eat dinner?”
“I did. Would you like to know the measures of portions and each item on the plate?”
She chuckled, and he smiled in return. Beneath the blanket of that smile she did not feel her rebellious stomach or smell her putrid sweat or even mind her somewhat weak knees.
“I am hungry. And as we are apparently to have those children after all, I probably should eat to maintain my health.”
He laughed. “Unusual young lady, indeed.”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea to assign to me an interesting condition.” Now the whole of her legs felt wobbly. She slipped around him and went to the table where a plate of biscuits sat beside a teapot. “I cannot imagine what Mrs. Polley was thinking to invent that.”
“No doubt she thought it would seem to our hosts a more appealing incapacity than drunkenness. Or disease. And I believe she hoped to impose a veneer of domestic responsibility upon her role in the thing.” A beat of silence. “And mine.”
Her fingers stalled on the teapot handle. “Yours?”
“With each cup of punch you took last evening, her glower at me deepened.”
“Whatever for?”
“I am under the impression that she feels I was responsible for your excess.”
“Well I know you were not.” She poured the tea and drank it and her hands barely even shook, which was remarkable since he was watching her and there were any number of things she and he both could say now that would be highly uncomfortable. For her, at least. “How did we come to be here, and where precisely is here?”
“Imprecisely, somewhere between Shrewsbury and Bishops Castle.”
“Bishops Castle? Isn’t that—?”
“West? Yes. I thought it best to avoid the main road, for both secrecy and safety’s sake.”
“I recall you saying something about driving far enough so that no one would recognize Sir Henry’s carriage and horses, so I suppose this family does not. They were very kind to take us in.” She chewed on a biscuit and took a second. “Oh!” She looked up. “Did you leave my necklace?”
Now his eyes twinkled. “You would have it no other way.”
“It was the honorable thing to do.”
“It is a shame, really, that upon this quest you cannot yourself play the role of the hero.”
“I don’t have to. You are playing it. And . . .” She fiddled with a biscuit, crumbling it between the tips of her fingers. “I am grateful to you for being honorable.” She was also mortified. And keenly disappointed.
