Mr Beaumont wrapped a hand around her elbow, shifting her to one side, and with a burst of irritation she noted it was a protective gesture; a drunken man staggered past them in search of fresh air.
“Careful, Emily,” he said in a low voice. “One might think you’d never stepped foot in an inn before.”
She felt her face heat at the derisive note in his voice. “Don’t call me by my Christian name,” she snapped. “It’s not polite.”
“What do you call your sister?”
“How dare you bring my sister up now?”
He gave her a little shake, eyes glinting. “What do you call her?”
“Isabella,” she said, realising too late what he had been forcing her to come to terms with. Siblings, as they were pretending to be, tended to use their first names to address one another.
“Call me Oliver,” he said, and released her, striding into the taproom as though he belonged there. She followed, hiding her reddened, cracked hands in her cloak. If anyone believed they were brother and sister, she would eat her bonnet—her bonnet which, thanks to the lateness of the hour last night, she had notput on. As she followed him further into the room, and sat in the chair he pulled out for her, she kept her hood up.
Even so, unruly curls danced from underneath it, frizzing from the cold and the wind.
Mr Beaumont—she refused to call him by his given name, no matter what liberties he thought he could take with her—made no comment and merely ordered a large breakfast. Sausages, bacon, eggs and ale. All things she was not accustomed to eating first thing in the morning. Or, of late, at all.
Sound from the other patrons cut through the silence between them. Emily merely gazed out of the window, doing her best to ignore her companion.
Eventually, however, she could no longer bear it. “Why are you marrying my sister?” she asked abruptly, turning.
His brows both rose. “Why not?”
“What do you mean? She is seventeen and has no dowry.”
“I have no need for a dowry.” When a buxom maid brought Mr Beaumont his ale, he winked at her, and Emily’s ire rose like bile in her throat.
“How dare you make up to every pretty girl you encounter after claiming to intend marriage for my sister,” she said under her breath.
His gaze flicked to her, as though he, too, was aware that she had condemned herself by not classing herself as one of the said pretty girls. He tipped the frothy concoction into his mouth, then made a face. “Tastes like piss.” At her look of irritation, he sighed and rolled his eyes. “Your sister isn’t here, and thanks to your hand in the matter, I’m not marrying her. What do you expect from me?”
“Some constancy! Fidelity, perhaps?”
“I’ll save that for after I have a wife.”
“And if she were here?”
He gave her a very pointed look. “If she were here instead of you, things would be going rather differently.”
Her cheeks burned, but she resolutely refused to look away. “You are crude.”
“And you are a prude,” he said, almost in dismissal. “Eager to judge. Has no one ever told you not to throw the first stone?”
“Has anyone toldyounot to seduce underage girls?”
“On the contrary,” he said, irritation flaring in his eyes. “I never seduced her. I courted her.”
“You intended to abscond with her.”
“I intended to marry her,” he said, producing the words as though bored. “Hardly the same thing.”
“And you might have done so honourably!”
“Oh?” He leant closer, bracing on his elbows. “And would you have granted me permission, Miss Brunton? As her guardian, would you have allowed me the privilege of marrying your sister?”
“I might have done,” she said, honesty forcing the truth from her, “if I thought you loved her.”
