“We will get through this,” she whispered fiercely.“I swear it to you.”
“Of course we will,” came Lucy’s muffled reply.“There’s no need for dramatics.It’s a shabby coaching inn, not the seventh circle of hell.”
Gemma laughed, but she noticed that Lucy was holding on to her as tightly as she had when she was little, when Lucy had woken from nightmares in the middle of the night and the only one who could calm her was her older sister.
Giving her one more squeeze, Gemma let go.Stripping off her gloves and unpinning her black straw bonnet, she left them on the mattress and ventured back out into the hall.
Gemma paused at the top of the stairs.From below, the sounds of a public house had begun to drift upward—the clank of tankards and the clatter of chairs, the hum of conversation punctuated by the occasional shout of laughter.
Hewould be down there, Gemma supposed, picturing him inescapably the way he’d looked standing behind the bar with his indecently bared forearms resting on the wood.Thick and corded with muscle even at rest, dusted with dark, coppery hairs.And his hands, broad and competent and blunt-fingered.The memory sent a thrill through Gemma, even as she frowned at her own silliness.
She was not here to moon over the barman of a decrepit coaching inn that clearly hadn’t seen overnight guests in years.She was here to discover the richest man with the best title in the area, and make him fall in love with her.
But first, the basics of comfort for her mother.
Gemma set one slippered foot to the top step, and abruptly found she didn’t want to go any farther.The prospect of traipsing through a crowd of ale-sodden farmers to find a pot of tea did not appeal.Another run-in with the insolent barman also sounded like more than she was up to at present.
There had to be another way.
Turning, she hurried back down the hall to the door at the other end, hoping it would lead to a rear staircase.Which it did, an even pokier, darker staircase than the other, and Gemma kept both hands out to brace against the walls as she crept down as quickly as she dared.
At the bottom of the stairs was an open doorway, and Gemma approached cautiously, unsure what she might find.She could hear the soft murmur of voices, much quieter than the cheerful din of the main barroom.Two people, perhaps, or at most, three.
A delicious smell wafted up to her, warm and yeasty and toasty like freshly baked bread.Gemma quickened her pace, suddenly more hopeful that she was about to find the kitchen and the source of that delicious scent.
Peeking around the doorway with a light rap of the knuckles to announce her presence, she felt the smile drop from her face as she came upon the tall barman with his head bent to speak quietly with a woman standing by the open hearth and stirring something in a pot.They were the only people in the kitchen, and they though didn’t exactly spring apart when Gemma knocked, there was an air of startlement and a quickly smoothed flutter of guilt.Enough to make Gemma certain that she was interrupting a very…intimateconversation.
Well, more accurately, the other woman appeared a bit flustered—the tall, bearded man looked the same as he had when Gemma first laid eyes on him.Impassive.Insolent.With a challenging glimmer in his dark green eyes that tempted Gemma unmercifully.
Gemma realized suddenly that she had taken that challenging glint as masculine interest, and only now, when it seemed she’d clearly been mistaken, did she understand how deeply—and foolishly—disappointed she was.
But mistaken she must be, if Mr.Surly Barkeep was in a position to stand intimately close and whisper with a woman who looked like this one.
Tall and slender, in contrast to Gemma’s curvy pocket Venus stature, this woman had the pink and gold coloring of the classic English rose.She was like a shepherdess in a romantic painting, all blonde curls and sparkling brown eyes, with the kind of warm serenity to her countenance that gave her drab homespun dress and white apron the elegance of a ballgown.
Acutely conscious of her own travel-stained and creased attire, and the way her windblown hair must be tumbling from its pins, it took everything Gemma had not to reach up and fuss with her coiffure.
But the single arched brow from Mr.Surly Barkeep stiffened her spine and her resolve.
“Are you lost?”he asked, picking up a red apple from the table on the other side of the hearth and polishing it idly on his sleeve.“If you’re looking for Charlie to tell him you want a ride back to London, I put him up in the rooms over the stables.”
Gemma frowned.“Who is Charlie?”
One arched brow was joined by another.“Your coachman,” he said slowly, as though explaining to a child.“Middling height?Fancy blue uniform?Said he’d worked for your family for fifteen years?”
Her cheeks felt hot.“Of course I know our coachman.I thought his name was John.”
He cocked his head.“Be honest.You never thought about his name at all.”
The truth of this struck Gemma like a slap.Before she could stutter a reply, the blonde woman had lifted her soup spoon from the pot and rapped the barkeep smartly on the shoulder with it.
“Behave, Hal,” she said sternly, a smile lurking in her dimpled cheeks.Gemma wanted to hate her, but couldn’t when she turned to Gemma to say, “I’m so sorry about him, Your Ladyship.He’s not accustomed to dealing with persons of Quality.”
A smothered snort from the barkeep—Hal—got him a warning look from the cook.He subsided with a cheeky grin that Gemma wanted to either kiss or slap off his handsome face.
Get yourself under control, Gem.
“Don’t see many Ladyships wandering into the kitchen of a coaching inn,” Hal pointed out, taking a loud, crunching bite of his apple.“Is all I’m saying.”
