Callie pushed back her hair and avoided his gaze. The knot had come undone and her hair draggled everywhere in damp strings. She knew she looked a sight.
“Mr. Gabe…you’re smiling!” the groom exclaimed as if that was something amazing.
Callie’s stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly. She coughed to cover the dreadful sound.
Barrow’s smile broadened. “Take your young lady inside and feed her. What did you say your name was, Miss?”
“Prin—” Callie caught herself in time. “Pr—Prynne,” she said, feeling her blush deepening and hoping they would notice nothing amiss. Her tiredness had made her forget for a moment who she was—or rather who she was pretending to be.
“I am Mrs. Prynne, and this is my son, Nicholas.”
She glanced at Nicky, who’d squatted down to pat the dog. At her introduction he rose and gave a formal little bow. Callie bit her lip. She should not be teaching her son to lie and pretend with such facility, but she had no choice. They’d used several different names already in their journey. This was the first time she’d slipped and almost said Princess. She was so tired.
And that man had distracted her. She darted a glance to see if Mr. Gabe had noticed the pause or not and found he was watching Nicky with a faint frown. Perhaps he didn’t like her son patting his dog.
“Nicky,” she said quietly and gestured for him to leave the dog. Nicky moved to her side. His limp was worse than usual; the cliff climb on top of their long journey had worn him to a thread.
“How d’ye do, ma’am,” Barrow said. “So, you’re a widow, eh?”
She blinked. The habit of common people to ask direct, personal questions still shocked her a little. It was not polite to inquire so intimately of a stranger. But she had the response to this one off by heart—she’d learned by hard experience which answer served her and Nicky best.
“No, of course not. My husband was delayed on the road and is a short way behind us.” Too late she realized she should have said he was delayed at sea. Or something. She darted another glance at Mr. Renfrew. He knew she’d come by boat. She bit her lip and tried to look indifferent.
He looked down at her, an odd look on his face. “I think, Mrs. Prynne, that you are quite at the end of your tether,” he said softly. “And so is your son. Come on, let’s get you both into the warmth.”
Nicky took two ragged steps and without hesitation, Mr. Renfrew scooped him up and carried him from the stable.
She ran after him. “What are you doing?”
“He’s hurt himself. Didn’t you see he was limping? Badly, too.” To Nicky he said, “Don’t worry, lad, we’ll see that foot seen to.”
“But—” she began, then stopped. Nicky had made no attempt to resist, which was unlike him. He must really be exhausted.
“Prynne,” Gabriel Renfrew said as they crossed the courtyard. “Interesting name. A Quaker, are you?”
“No.”
He carried Nicky into a large, open country kitchen. It was a cozy room, with copper pots gleaming in the lamplight and the smells of food and herbs. An enormous scrubbed wooden table stood in the center, with a dozen ladder-back chairs surrounding it.
A tall, plump middle-aged woman stood waiting for them, a dress thrown over her nightgown, a shawl knotted around her shoulders and an apron over them all. Mrs. Barrow, Callie presumed.
“’Tis a dreadful night!” she said. “Put the wee lad and the lady by the fire, Mr. Gabe. There’s hot water on the stove. I’ll go and make up a bed in the blue room.”
Despite the size of the room and the stone-flagged floors, it was warm inside. The fire in the big cast-iron kitchen range glowed through the grill.
“Here you go.” He set Nicky on his feet on a plaited rag rug in front of the kitchen range. “Sit down, both of you, and get yourselves warm.”
“Thank you.” She sat gratefully, soaking up the warmth, while Nicky sank onto the rug. The size, cleanliness, and homeyness of the room was reassuring. Too many people had lied to her for her to trust strangers easily, but a well-scrubbed kitchen was…different.
Villains could be clean and homey, too, she reminded herself. Probably. She might be exhausted—she could not recall when she’d last had a good night’s sleep—but she needed to stay on her guard. Her journey was far from over.
Mr. Renfrew took off his wet overcoat and hung it on a nail at the back door. He removed his damp coat and waistcoat and hung them on the back of a chair. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, opened the stove door, and stirred the glowing coals.
She stared at his bare, tanned forearms and large, strong hands as he methodically fed small chips of wood into the coals, then larger pieces. He applied a pair of bellows and flames flickered up, gilding his profile, highlighting the bold nose and the hard angles and shadows of his face.
She gazed at the strong column of Mr. Renfrew’s throat and the clean line of his jaw. His shirt was open at the neck. The flames leapt and crackled. His face was lit by fire. She shouldn’t be staring, but she had to keep her eyes open to stop from falling asleep, and he was there, right in front of her.
He was not a pretty man, not handsome in the way of the young men Callie had admired as a girl, and yet he was…beautiful in a strange way. Hard and strong and ruthless-looking. A clean-limbed, sculpted warrior, pared down to the essentials. Formidable.
