“No.”
“Then only an hour.”
“An hour,” he said, “is not going to do you any good. If we stop for an hour, that’s an extra hour we’ll have to travel after nightfall. The sooner this is over, the better for you.”
Infusing her soggy backbone with some stiffness, she resettled her spine into a more noble posture. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to know where we’re going.”
He took a step forward and settled the cloak around her shoulders, and she conquered an impulse to step away.
“I’ll let you know”—he fastened her cloak—“when I’m in the mood.”
“That’s much too good of you,” she answered with sarcasm that tried hard to be withering. “Would it spoil some international tactical arrangement and plunge the empire into chaos if I could have five minutes to comb my hair?”
“Comb it in the coach” was his laconic answer as he took her arm, propelling her toward the door. She pulled out of his grip.
“Hang it, Devon, I want five minutes to use the convenience.” She felt her cheeks turn crimson.
“Well, for God’s sake, why didn’t you say so? I don’t know your code,” he said.
At his worst the man had an inherent decency that evenhe couldn’t escape. When it turned out the outdoor privy was unusable after flooding from the recent heavy rains, Devon rented her a bedchamber and told her with a sudden almost reluctant kindness that if she really thought an hour’s rest would help her, she could have it, but no longer. Her face must be looking more weary than she realized.
The bedchamber was clean and old-fashioned, smelling faintly of the home-brewed ale used to gloss the fine oak wainscot. It more than made up for its deficiency of not being on the ground floor by possessing a window that faced toward the back of the inn, with a wide tiled porch directly beneath supported by stout poles that appeared to have been designed with shinnying down them in mind. And she might have gotten away too if the landlord had been as conscientious about keeping his roof in repair as he was about preserving the finishing on his wainscoting. And if it hadn’t been his practice to keep his geese flocked in a pen directly beneath.
It was a sorry spectacle of an escape attempt; in fact it ranked as her worst. The flustered geese trumpeted their fury at her and ran about her in circles loosing feathers while she sat winded in the ooze under the new gash in the porch roof, with splinters of lathing and bits of plaster falling on her head and a broken window pot of geraniums between her legs. The gander spread his ruffled wings ominously and stood before her like Gabriel reprimanding a sinner. Through a forest of arching scrawny necks Merry saw the people come running; the ostlers, the stableboys, the hired postilion, the kitchen maids, the two ladies with their yipping poodle, the landlord and landlady, and finally Devon, who dragged her out of the mud and feathers and across the fence. But this was a different Devon from the cold-eyed stranger who had put her in his coach this morning. This was a smiling, urbane Devon who dripped tact like warm molasses, apologizing to the landlord even as he slipped him a note for the damages.When it became clear that the landlord’s curiosity as well as his temper was aroused about what purpose a young woman might have in hopping around on his porch roof, Devon’s smile increased in power and became at once rueful and convincing. The hand he laid on her shoulder seemed a kindly gesture; only Merry felt the threat in the pressure of his strong fingers. Her jaw clenched with humiliated rage as she listened to Devon tell the titillated mob that she was the runaway youngest daughter of a Frensham barrister (the tone of voice managing to convey neatly that she had been much indulged) and then continue to describe himself as her older cousin, who had barely rescued her from a disastrous elopement with a penniless foot soldier (a gambler and unprincipled wastrel if only she could be brought to see it!).
“Why, of all the unctuous, deceitful—How dare you!” Merry cried, unbearably mortified by the severely critical expressions directed toward her. Too tired to quite know or care what she was saying, Merry turned pleadingly to the landlady, who had at least shown more concern for Merry’s possible injuries than for the broken porch. “It’s not true! I beg you to believe me. This man is a pirate. He’s kidnapped me and held me for months on his pirate ship and refuses to release me in spite of my pleading.”
She might as well have saved her breath. Truth is so often no more impressive than its herald—and she made a thoroughly unimpressive herald. It was with despair but not surprise that she saw compassionate condescension alight convincingly on Devon’s features.
“Oh, Nan,” he said to her, laughing. “How could you? Very well, then. As you say, I’m a pirate, and I’ve kidnapped you.”
“But you have! He has! He’s telling the truth!”
It was no use. None at all. The landlady began to tut-tut, the kitchen maids to giggle, and the ladies with the poodleto talk about the want of conduct prevalent among young females of this generation. The landlord clapped Devon heartily on the back and proclaimed him the scourge of the Seven Seas, adding with a sly wink that he supposed the shot was to be paid for in pieces of eight! There was a good deal more of that kind of badinage, which Devon allowed to continue until, apparently, he felt that he was well revenged.
A mile from the inn he stopped the carriage beside an arched stone bridge above a brook where cows rustled, half-concealed in the rushes. She shrank from him but had no strength to fight when he entered the carriage with a length of rope and bound her wrists.
“I’ll say this for you,” he conceded grimly. “You try.”
Evening came, a smoky mauve lip on a black horizon. They had stopped often to change horses. Twice he had brought food to the carriage, and she’d had to eat it with her hands tied. She’d had to ask him to make a third stop with choked-back pride. This time the “convenience” was a beech copse where wasps zigzagged among tiny hawkweed flowers, and convenient it was not, because he refused to untie her wrists. If his acute golden eyes noticed the trail on her cheek left by tears hastily knuckled dry with bound hands when she came back to the carriage, he gave no sign of it. Mentally retracting everything she’d thought earlier about his basic decency, she was so wretched, she almost had the relief of being able to convince herself she hated him.
She slept, or it seemed so. A gray veil settled over her vision; a soft roar muffled all other sound; her mind carried meandering dream images. Awareness came occasionally in swiftly vanishing stabs. Some fragment of her stuporous brain registered the choked turnpikes, the change in sounds and odors, the brilliant flash of bright-lit shop windows glancing off her eyelashes. She slid into wakefulness in a still carriage, her body crumpled over her valise. Her spinefelt like a stiff iron pipe, her eyes burned from lack of rest, and her throat was sandy. Devon, gathering her upright, was shrouded in rotating star points. Blinking rapidly against the altering intensity of light and the fresher air as he drew her outside, she pulled out of the steadying arms, her pattens clicking against a pavement.
“Don’t,” she snapped. “I can walk.”
“As you wish,” he answered impassively, not taking his hand from her elbow. Her strained eyes focused on his unreceptive features and then turned wildly over her shoulder toward the street alive with the chime of bridle and harness as elegant town coaches passed upon its great breadth. Buildings of immense proportion lined the even pavement, their Corinthian pilasters and dazzling Venetian windows dwarfing a frontage of darkened shrubs.
“Where am I?” she whispered.
“In London. Portland Place,” he said, taking her valise in one hand and escorting her through an openwork iron gate toward a portico that housed the fan-vaulted door of a tall Palladian mansion.
Disoriented by fatigue, she said, “This isn’t a prison?”
“I suppose that would depend on one’s philosophical bent,” he said, but then seeing she was much too tired to make anything of that remark, he added, “No, it’s not generally considered to be a prison. Frightened out of your wits, are you?”
Letting her anger show, she ground out, “Would that please you?”
“It might. Everyone likes to be taken seriously. To which I add the homily—”
