“I heard them speaking while I followed them.”
“Lots of people speak French,” she said, “especially when they don’t want the lower orders to understand.I’ve been known to do it myself.”
It was something he hadn’t thought of, so he spared the theory a moment’s consideration.“It did not sound like Englishmen speaking French,” he said cautiously.He could tell the difference, having had both English and French tutors in that language.“And they certainly came off the small boats along with brandy.But perhaps I’ve jumped to conclusions.”
“And perhaps not,” she said urgently.“This is a very odd inn, Jack.It’s large and spacious and yet most of it smells unused, and we appear to be the only guests.We weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms.There are lots of rooms, yet Lily and I were shoved into the same one at the very back of the house and strongly encouraged to dine there—kept out of the way, in other words.”
His name on her lips gave him a pleasurable little frisson, though he tried to concentrate on her words.“There are some inns that are little more than dens of thieves,” he said.
“Were you robbed in one of them, too?”
“No, I was warned off just in time by a more experienced traveller who sold rather charming under-garments for ladies.I don’t like your being here.”
Her eyes were alight with laughter, though whether at his caution or his under-clothes salesman, he could not tell.He just felt the effect in the pit of his stomach.And lower.He tried to think.
“I shall stay here, too,” he said decisively.“It will take me only five minutes to fetch my horse.”He began to move toward the courtyard wall by the stables, over which he had climbed in the first place.
“Wait,” she hissed after him.“What if they don’t let you in?”
“I shall be too important to keep out.”
Chapter Five
As she watched himclamber up the corner of the stable and the yard wall, using footholds from both, his dark figure looked more ungainly than she had ever seen him, as though he had never climbed as a boy.Which was odd for someone of such an adventurous spirit.Still, he got there, for she heard the faint thud on the other side of the wall.She just hoped he hadn’t broken his ankle.
She realized with surprise that it had begun to rain, more of a lazy drizzle than a downpour.She pulled the shawl over her head and hastened back to the outside steps.As she retrieved her candle, still mercifully alight, and ran up, she hoped no one had locked the door.Hopefully, they had all been too busy with their delivery of brandy and French speaking gentlemen.
The door opened easily, and she locked it carefully behind her before creeping back toward her bedchamber.She could hear no voices below or anywhere else in the dark house.
She shivered.She did not like the Rains couple at all.There was a hardness, a ruthlessness about their eyes.She could imagine them regarding two aristocratic women as too silly and too important to do away with.But what of Jack?A solitary traveller with no obvious connections and somewhat physically fragile...although there had been strength in the arms that had pinned her to the wall.
Her stomach plunged all over again as she remembered the all too brief caress of his mouth...
She hurried on around the corner, shining her candle into all the shadows it would reach.It was with considerable relief she finally slipped back inside their own room and quietly closed the door.
“Lily?We need to make some excuse to...”She trailed off, looking rather wildly around the room in search of her stepdaughter.“Lily, where thedevil...”
