Heather frowned. “Do they know he is, or is that just”—she waved a hand—“conjecture? A guess?”
Eyes on her knitting, Martha snorted. “No guess.” She glanced up, met Heather’s eyes. “Stands to reason. Take it from me, only a toff would have thought of hiring a maid as part of his kidnap plans.”
That, Heather realized, was perfectly true.
Which meant the man who had ordered her kidnapping was almost certainly one of her own class. Which made him even more dangerous to her.
“You just behave yourself, you hear me?”
Heather glanced in surprise at Fletcher. She and Martha had just walked into the taproom for dinner. Fletcher had seen them; leaving the table of local men he’d been drinking with — which group included a certain viscount who not even his sisters would recognize — he’d come over to join her and Martha as they took their seats at the table in the room’s front corner.
Fletcher’s diction, normally precise, was a trifle slurred, especially as he’d hissed the words beneath his breath.
Heather frowned. “Why?” Realizing her tone wasn’t quite in keeping with her helpless and harmless — gormless — persona, she sniffed and added, “And anyway, when haven’t I behaved?” With a flounce, she sat and looked up at Fletcher with petulant irritation, as if he didn’t appreciate her as he ought.
Fletcher frowned back. “Just sit there, keep your head down, and eat. Don’t think to say anything. He’s just an out-of-work solicitor’s clerk — don’t go imagining he might help you escape.”
He looked back at the other table.
Following his gaze, Heather saw Cobbins lumbering to his feet — along with Breckenridge. Deciding her alter ego would inquire, she asked with innocent interest, “Who’s he? Is he coming to join us?”
“Yes, he is, but you don’t need to know his name.” Fletcher turned back to her. “This isn’t some society dining room — you’re not going to be introduced. Like I said”—he leaned closer, lowered his voice as Cobbins and Breckenridge neared—“just sit and eat, and keep your mouth shut.”
Heather glared, but then Martha heaved herself onto the bench alongside her, and Fletcher turned away to greet Breckenridge.
Fletcher waved Breckenridge to the seat he normally occupied, opposite Martha, and drew up another chair to the head of the table, between Martha and Breckenridge. Cobbins settled into the chair opposite Heather.
“This here’s Martha.” Fletcher waved to Martha, who nodded across the table. “This is our friend, Timms, who’s on his way to Glasgow to find himself a new job.”
Head dutifully bowed, hands clasped in her lap, through her lashes Heather saw Breckenridge nod to Martha, then look at her, then he arched a brow at Fletcher.
“I think,” Fletcher said, “that the less you know about our charge, the better her guardian would like it, if you take my meaning.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” Breckenridge amiably turned his gaze from her. He looked past Fletcher at the serving girl hurrying up. “So what’s on the menu tonight?”
Haddock and turnips, or mutton again.
When asked, Heather glanced at the girl and whispered, “Haddock. And a glass of water, please.” The other four had opted for ale.
As she’d been bid, Heather sat with eyes downcast and listened to the conversation, occasionally glancing up through her lashes at her companions.
Mostly at Breckenridge.
She knew it was him — despite the dark roughness of his beard, his tousled hair, and his less-than-kempt appearance, she could see it was him — but his voice was quite different, which unsettled her. She was used to his fashionable drawl, and equally accustomed to his clipped and incisive, unaffected speech — the voice he used when ordering her about — but listening to him now. . if she didn’t look, she could almost believe he was indeed some clerk one step away from the slums of the capital.
As for his choice of subject matter fit for the dinner table. .
Pushing pieces of overcooked haddock around her plate, she listened in fascinated horror as he bandied details of cockfights he’d witnessed with Fletcher and Cobbins. Glancing at Martha, Heather saw that even she was following the often gruesome details. Suppressing a shudder — describing chickens decapitated or ripped to shreds by spurs fixed to other chickens’ talons wasn’t her notion of uplifting discourse — she tried to focus on something else, but the haddock was uninspiring.
Her mind drifted. . to the peculiar fact that despite Breckenridge not sounding or appearing like himself, she still felt enveloped by the aura of comfort, of security, that she now associated with being near him. And even in his currently rumpled, distinctly unelegant state, she was still aware of the underlying attraction. . which was strange. She’d always assumed it was his handsomeness that so effortlessly held her interest. But if not that, then what?
For long moments — in the taproom of a tiny inn at Gretna Green — she tried to puzzle it out, tried to solve the riddle of what it was in Breckenridge that had always commanded that particular, intense, oh-so-feminine awareness.
Then Fletcher grunted and she jerked back to the present.
She hadn’t heard how Breckenridge had managed to redirect the conversation, but Fletcher readily volunteered, “We’ll definitely be here all tomorrow, and most likely the day after that, too. I thought I’d counted the days right, but I did another reckoning this morning, and seems I was a day out.”
Fletcher focused, rather blearily, on Breckenridge, who was looking increasingly disreputable. “What about you, then? You well enough to drive on tomorrow?”
Staring at the ale mug he held clasped between his hands, Breckenridge seemed to think, then slowly shook his head from side to side. “Nope. Wound’s still aching something fierce.” His lips curved in what appeared to be an intoxicated smile. He raised his glass to Fletcher. “But this helps.”
“Good excuse.” Fletcher lifted the pitcher the girl had left on the table. “Here — never let it be said I denied an injured man his medicine.”
Breckenridge grinned in a thoroughly idiotic male way, and when Fletcher filled the mug, raised it and saluted him. “You’re a scholar and a gentleman, sir.”
Fletcher grinned. Cobbins guffawed.
They were all well-flown. Even Martha’s head was nodding, lower and lower.
Fletcher noticed. He poked Martha’s arm. “Here — you and the young miss ought to get upstairs.”
Martha snorted and shook herself, then glanced at Heather. “You’re right. I’m for bed.” Hauling her bulk up, she jerked her head, signaling Heather to follow suit.
Stifling a sigh, she slid along the bench and rose. As she did, she glanced at Breckenridge, but he was looking at Martha and nodding a vacuous farewell.
With an inward sniff, she followed her “maid” from the table. Without a backward glance, she left the room in Martha’s wake.
The inn quieted early that night. Heather made her way cautiously down the stairs as soon as the silence grew thick; waiting in the tiny cloakroom for Breckenridge to appear was better than listening to Martha’s snores.
Her gusty, inebriated snores.
Reaching the hall, she slipped around the counter and cautiously opened the cloakroom door. Inside, the confined space was dark and gloomy, but her eyes were well enough adjusted to the night to be sure there was no one inside.
It wasn’t only her eyesight that informed her Breckenridge wasn’t there waiting.
Tense, she hesitated, not liking the idea of stepping into the dark alone. He might be another hour; he might be as intoxicated as Martha. They hadn’t agreed on any specific time—
A sound cut across her senses; silently whirling, she saw candlelight wavering in the taproom, the bearer still out of her sight, heard heavy footsteps plodding her way.
A dark shadow swooped down the stairs, straight to her.
She opened her lips—
A hard palm slapped over them. A steely arm wrapped around her.
Breckenridge lifted her from her feet and, holding her against him, slipped them both into the cloakroom and
