“Does it still hurt?”
“Occasionally.”
He stretched his arms above his head, twisting his torso from side to side perhaps to see if this was one of those occasions, and he did actually gasp. She cringed for him. “So it does hurt?”
“Just on my back, never on my chest, deuced odd,” he replied. “A bit of rubbing usually helps, but I can’t reach it.”
She sucked in her breath. He wasn’t suggesting she massage his back, was he? She wouldn’t mind! But she didn’t dare give into a temptation that could lead to a lot more than rubbing his back if she got that close to him.
“Or you can let me sleep on the floor,” he added. “Hard surfaces tend to help when this old wound acts up. If you wouldn’t mind taking the bed instead?”
She nodded and headed toward the comfortable-looking bed while he picked up two of his pistols and went over to where the quilt had landed on the floor. But he was going to wonder why she slept in her clothes after he’d stripped down almost completely, so she bundled up fast under the covers so he wouldn’t notice and faced the side of the room away from him.
She guessed he was looking her way again when he asked, “Are you asleep yet, Ness?”
Of course she wasn’t, only moments had passed since she lay down, but she still said, “I am, and we’re leaving early in the morn, so you should be, too.”
“Tell me about yourself. I’m beginning to think your secrets are more interesting than mine.”
“Was I not clear enough that I’m asleep?”
He laughed. “Most definitely. Very well, we’ll resume this conversation in the morning when you’re not asleep.”
But about a half hour later, he mumbled, “I should have drunk more of that cheap wine.”
A short while later he added, “Bloody hell, I’m calling a truce.”
Vanessa didn’t respond, but wondered what the deuce he meant by that. He wasn’t the only one having trouble getting to sleep tonight.
Chapter Nine
AS MONTGOMERY LAY ONthe floor, he thought about the very pretty wench in the bed nearby. Who did she think she was fooling?
He’d been unable to stop staring at her from the moment he’d guessed he was a she when she’d turned to look for Charley after they’d stopped for lunch and he’d gotten a glimpse of her face. He’d been bowled over. The audacity of her trying to pass herself off as a boy when her waist was so narrow, her hands so delicate, her face so feminine and pretty. Why was she disguising herself? Or maybe it wasn’t a disguise. She could have been raised without any of the feminine frills, might never have worn a dress or coiffed her hair or batted her eyes. Good God, she would be devastating if she did. But why had she continued the pretense after she’d been found out?
Her denying it was silly, didn’t matter a jot. It just made him determined to get her to fess up so they could enjoy traveling together in other ways. But he let her think her ruse was still working because he didn’t want her to ride away. However, trying to tempt the wench into revealing herself or force her to scream at him in outrage for disrobing in front of her proved that the idea of enjoying an amorous night with her had turned him into a bloody fool. There would be no more silliness like that. For whatever reason she wanted the world to see a boy standing in her boots, he had to go along with it and give up the notion of her in his bed. As soon as that was settled in his mind he got right to sleep.
A loud noise at the door jolted him awake. It was much louder than a normal knock. Having left one lamp burning for the night, he immediately saw why. There was an ax blade stuck in the door. It hadn’t been pulled out yet for another whack. Grabbing a pistol, he ran to the door before that happened.
A bloody ax. How the devil had Chanders’s thugs found him?
But the ax didn’t get pulled out of the door. Before he could unlock the door, he heard a loud thud in the corridor, then some other noise that wasn’t very loud. When he flung the door open, ready to shoot, no one was there. He peeked into the hall and saw a body being dragged around the corner to the stairs, only the boots of the downed man were visible for a moment before they disappeared.
A head suddenly poked under the arm he had braced against the doorframe, followed by a hand gripping a flintlock. He was arrested by the sight of copper-colored hair. Copper? What a lovely color! No wonder she hid that, too, until now. And she probably didn’t know the hood of the cloak she was still wearing had slid back enough to reveal it. But she was trying to get past him and into the corridor.
He shifted his hips so she couldn’t squeeze through before saying, “I suppose one of the other guests didn’t like the noise either and put a stop to it. You can go back to bed, Ness.”
“I will, after I make sure there’s no one who needs shooting.”
He almost laughed but had a feeling she was serious. “I’ll do that. You’ll get back in bed.”
“Don’t be absurd. I’m dressed, you aren’t. There could be more thugs downstairs.”
This argument was getting silly, but there was no way he was letting her run downstairs and possibly straight into more of Chanders’s thugs. He lowered his arm and hooked it around her waist then hefted her horizontally against his hip and carried her back to the bed.
She immediately started to squirm. “Let me go!”
But he kept his tone reasonable as he explained, “We’d hear more noise if there were more thugs downstairs, so there’s no reason for both of us to lose more sleep over this. And you’ve delayed me from checking on Charley long enough. Go back to sleep.”
