The innkeeper’s wife took them upstairs to the first floor, and unlocked a room that was about ten feet square. An enormous bed, which took up most of the room, rose under the beams, a bright fire danced on a hearth, and a tray laden with hot coffee and cups lay on a table near the fire.
“I’ve brought you out a nightgown, Madame,” the innkeeper’s wife said, shaking out a long, slightly yellowed cotton gown. “I’ll help you undress, same as a lady’s maid. And my husband will do for you, Monsieur.”
“I don’t need much doing,” Daniel said. “You get comfortable, Vi. I’ll take care of the message to your mum. She doesn’t need to worry about us.”
He kept up the verisimilitude well. No stammering, no embarrassment, no forgetting parts of the fiction he was weaving. But at the same time, he was giving Violet time to change out of her clothes without him near in this tiny room.
Daniel departed on his errand, the innkeeper’s wife agreeing that mothers worried—she worried every day about her son off working in Aix-en-Provence instead of helping them tend the inn.
“Not that we have much to do here,” she went on. “City folk come out seeking country air in the summer, and sometimes the shooting parties get this far, but in spring, with the planting, and city folk keeping to their theatres and operas, not many come out to see us.”
And the inn was a bit away from the railway, Violet finished silently, and those with money took the fast trains from Paris to the coast. Not much call for a coaching inn these days. Daniel had been right that these people could use extra money.
Still chattering, the innkeeper’s wife unbuttoned and unlaced Violet’s dress and petticoats, helped her out of her corset, and slid the warmed and pressed nightgown over her head. Violet hadn’t been waited on in such a very long time . . . or had she ever been, like this? As though she were a true lady, married to someone like Daniel.
Daniel returned in little over half an hour. By then it was fully dark, and he came noisily into the bedroom, bringing with him a wave of cold and the smell of wood smoke.
Violet had curled up on the soft chair before the fire after the innkeeper’s wife had gone, and remained there, too tired to rise. She’d wrapped a borrowed dressing gown and a blanket from the bed around her, her feet pulled up under them. “You walked three miles there and back awfully fast,” she said to Daniel. “The coffee is still warm, I think.”
“I met a boy from the next village halfway along, and he carried the message back for me. He was expecting me. Gossip must be spread by carrier pigeon between these villages.”
He came to pour himself a cup of the coffee, which put him close to Violet. His coat still held the cold of outside, but the wool of his kilt smelled warm. The heat of him slid through Violet’s blanket and made her draw herself closer.
“The innkeeper’s wife brought a nightshirt for you,” Violet said, clutching her cup. “It’s laid out on the bed.”
Daniel shucked his coat and hung it on a hook, caught up the nightshirt, and sat down in the other chair, resting the nightshirt on his lap. “Kind of her.”
“They’re being very kind, I’ve noticed.” Violet kept to English, knowing anything overheard in French would be all over this village and the next by the following morning, presumably by carrier pigeon. “They like you, and perhaps sense your aristocratic connections.”
Daniel grinned. “They sense my jingling pockets. Remember this country’s history—these folks’ great- great-grandparents rose up and threw the French aristocrats out on their bums a hundred years ago. Forty years ago, they sent the last emperor rushing for the safety of England. They’re not awed by my proximity to a title. If they like me, it’s because they know the benefit of a paying guest.”
Violet wasn’t so certain. Daniel did carry a certain weight of authority she noticed aristocrats had in any country, the knowledge that lesser beings would get out of the way for them. It wasn’t an arrogance with Daniel —he just
Daniel took a last sip of coffee and set down his cup. “Now then, the night is cold, the villagers go to bed with the sun, and I’m beat. Why don’t you get into the bed and cover up while I slip into my sleeping togs? I’m not modest, but you might be.”
The thought of Daniel peeling off his clothes while she lay in bed made Violet nearly swallow her tongue. He would be too near as he slid off his waistcoat and the shirt she’d earlier seen dampened with sweat against his well-honed arms. He’d bare all his skin, which would likely be as liquid tanned as his face and arms.
Violet masked her sharp intake of breath by fumbling her way out of the chair and clattering down her coffee cup. She kept the blanket around her until she reached the bed, then she tossed it on top before climbing the steps to the high bed. She found the covers warmed with wrapped bricks that had been slid to the bottom of the bed.
“Where will you sleep?” Violet asked Daniel. She settled under the quilts, trying not to look his way. “There isn’t a sofa, and the floor looks hard. There aren’t many covers up here to spare either.”
Daniel laughed. “I’m sleeping in that bed with you, lass. I’m exhausted, and the floor, as you say, is far too hard. I’m an aristocrat, remember? I like things soft.”
Chapter 12
Violet peered over the top of the covers in alarm. Daniel was just settling the nightshirt across his broad shoulders, the garment too small for him. It bared his forearms and the flowing tattoo, then fell to just above his knees. His legs were as tight and strong as the rest of him, his bare toes pressing the board floor.
“That bed’s big enough to float a battleship,” he said, not bothering to hide his near nudity. “We’d never find each other if we wanted to.”
He didn’t give her time to argue. Daniel climbed up the other side of the bed and slid under the covers while Violet stared at him, the quilt clutched to her chest.
Daniel laughed at her as he lay down. “Go to sleep, Vi. You’ll need your rest for tomorrow.”
He punched the pillow into shape, then flopped the covers over him, a man settling down for a winter’s nap. The rushlight on the other side of the room, which hadn’t emitted much glow in the first place, burned out with a sharp smell. The only light now was from the fire, which was licking at fragrant wood to warm the small room.
Violet lay down again, remaining on her side, facing him. Daniel reposed on his back, one arm behind his head, the other holding the covers to his chest. He closed his eyes, the lines of his face brushed with firelight.
She watched him awhile longer but he never moved. Confusing. Daniel had brought her here, posed as her husband, and insisted they share the bed, but now drifted to sleep as though they were trusted friends. Casual, comfortable, in the same way he shortened her name. No drama, no fear. Just Daniel’s warmth between Violet and the rest of the world.
She liked it. Violet had never felt safe and protected, not since she’d learned the truth of life.
Up here in their aerie, in this bed of cozy warmth, Daniel belonged to her. For a little while, Violet could pretend she was Daniel’s, that he loved and cherished her, that today was only a small part of a long life of happiness. Tomorrow, they would return to reality, but for tonight, he was hers, and she his.
A fine dream. One Violet would hold tightly to herself against the hour she’d have to let it go.
If Daniel got through the night with his sanity intact, it would be an astonishing thing. To have the most beautiful woman on earth
The courtesans at the very expensive houses Daniel visited to keep his needs at bay would laugh if they knew he kept an arm’s length between himself and Violet. He’d set up the tale that they were man and wife not only to keep the villagers from treating Violet poorly, but also so that no one in this house would think it odd if they heard him easing his passion with her.
