“It’s not you. It’s the whole situation. I prefer to make my own choices.” The admission probably wasn’t one she should have made out loud but her insides felt as though they could explode with tension and nervous anticipation. She had grown up with a company of friends to confide in. A ship was a small home compared to the mansions on Mayfair but it was never lonely. She had never known loneliness before moving to London. She may not have had female friends, but she was a chatterer, and right now, with James staring at her with pity in his eyes, she wanted to pour her heart out and make him understand why she had gone to such lengths as to sell her supposed virginity.
What she wanted was to speak with her father. She wanted to feel his tight embrace and the scratch of his beard on her cheek as he told her everything was going to be all right.
“Oh good God, please tell me you aren’t going to cry.”
The horrified tone of Trelissick’s voice pulled her back to the present, to the room at an inn where she was held hostage and would spend the night with a woman who smelled like stale vomit and sweat.
“I do not cry,” she replied. Even though her eyes burned and her throat felt as though it was stuck fast with a rock in it, she would not cry. Ever.
Trelissick exhaled with what sounded like the relief she had earlier longed for. “Get some rest. We leave first thing in the morning.”
“What about Mrs McDougal and Hobson? You can’t expect them to travel.”
“They are going to stay here.”
It dawned on her exactly what he didn’t say and Daniella wasn’t sure if she wanted to crow with joy or shrink back in fear. Alone. She would be alone with Trelissick in that carriage for hours on end each day. What was left of her reputation would finally wither and die, never to be revived again. She smiled.
“You needn’t look so happy about it.” He sighed. “We might be able to find another chaperone in the next village.”
“Are you worried for my reputation?” She laughed.
Trelissick turned the door handle and looked back one last time. The picture she must have made with her frizzed hair wild about her shoulders and the blankets tucked under her chin.
“I’m worried for mine.” And then he left, closing the door as quietly as he’d come.
All of Daniella’s happiness disappeared in that moment and she shivered. She hadn’t thought of his standing in the ton. Would his name sustain damage when linked with hers or would it bring the matchmakers out with rewards for removing her influence from their daughter’s lives?
Only time would tell.
*
James had no idea what the hell he was doing anymore. Just one hiccup in his plan and it all fell to pieces. It had never happened to him before. He always had contingencies for his contingencies when going into battle. Daniella Germaine was going to be the end of him.
Pondering her situation required ale and a lot of it so he found himself perched on the edge of a rough stool at the inn’s bar indulging like he shouldn’t. He would only drink to forget her siren’s call. To forget she was a victim in this saga and not its instigator.
At the sight of her red-rimmed eyes, he was ready to absolve her of her indiscretions and push her back to her brother’s embrace…except that that wasn’t what she wanted. After seeing her in a state of complete dishevelment and ready for bed—with obviously not much in the way of clothing on—it wasn’t what he wanted either.
When he’d first insinuated himself into her life he’d honestly thought her capers were those of a spoiled brat. The occasional anguish shadowing her eyes said it might be so much more.
James could understand the lures of freedom, especially as one who also felt the constraints of high society, but it was the world they’d both been landed in, whether Daniella accepted it or not. It was a club whose members had great privilege and greater responsibility, even if many revelled in the first at the expense of the second. She owed it to family and society to marry well and breed. And apart from any of that he wondered if she had stopped for even one moment to consider what she would do if her father turned her away. Again. There had to be very good reasons for the captain ignoring her, unless he simply hoped, given time and distance, she would accept her fate.
James snorted and tossed back the last of the ale in his mug and then gestured to the serving girl for just one more.
His own father had talked about phases and moods and the makings of a man when James had announced he was joining the war effort. Never one to assert his authority, and only newly ascended to the title his cousin had held until his untimely death, his father had purchased him a commission and wished him well. They all had new lives to lead and their mark to make on the world and in society. So James had said goodbye to his father, his brother John, his sister Amelia and his mother and left for parts unknown.
He was excited to fight for his country and put Bonaparte back in his cage but had he known what he would miss, the price of his leaving, or what he’d eventually come home to and come home as, he would have done without the excitement. He would have burned that commission and settled into being the spare. And, in hindsight, carousing with women, horse races and taunting the watch with his ton peers had to be better than being trained as a killing machine in His Majesty’s Army. At least if he’d played the part of a womanizing brat, he might have saved two
