Page 4 of How to Ruin a Rake

He yelped and held up his hands. “Wait! Let me stand!”

His attacker, who appeared to be a stocky man with the surly expression of a prize bulldog, took a step back, the pitchfork still raised threateningly at Max’s face.

“Get out of my hay!”

“I’d be delighted to do so, sir,” Max said. “And I am more than happy to recompense you for any damage I might inadvertently have caused.”

The bulldog’s scowl eased slightly. “I should bloody well hope so. I don’t stand for gentlefolk turning up in my barn in the middle of the night with never a by-your-leave.”

“I can only apologize,” Max said, although he had no idea how or why he’d ended up in the man’s barn in the first place. “It was most remiss of me.”

Perhaps some of his friends had played a trick on him, got him drunk, and dumped him somewhere in the countryside. It was just the sort of thing his friend Landon would find hilarious and that Max was beginning to think juvenile and tiresome.

“As I said, I’m happy to pay for any damage.” Max put his hand in his coat pocket, and it came out empty. He tried his other pocket with a rising sense of panic. Had his so-called friends left him with nothing? “I—”

“Your sister’s already taken care of it, sir,” the farmer said.

“My sister?” Max had a vague sense that he should know more about this person who definitely didn’t exist, but in the moment, the information eluded him.

“She’s up at the farmhouse having breakfast with my wife.”

“Wonderful. Perhaps we might join her?” Max suggested.

“She said there had been an accident with your carriage and that she’d had to uncouple the horses and bring them to safety,” the farmer said, as he led the way out of what turned out to be a substantial medieval barn, complete with arrow slits.

“Yes! That’s what happened.” Max grasped the idea with alacrity. “I must have hit my head.”

“So she said.”

The farmer led the way up to the top of a hill. Below, a slate-roofed, whitewashed farmhouse sat tranquilly beside a large kitchen garden. Smoke came out of the chimney and, as they approached, the appetizing smell of cooked bacon drifted from the open kitchen door. Max’s stomach rumbled.

“I reckon you’ll be hungry,” the farmer said as he followed Max into the kitchen.

“I am, Mr…?” Max looked inquiringly at the man.

“Lacock, and this is my wife, Mrs. Lacock.”

“A pleasure.” Max bowed at the woman standing at the stove.

“Sir.” She bobbed a curtsy, looking rather thrilled by what must be unusual activity. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Yes, please.”

Max sat down at the table, his gaze moving to the female already seated there. She regarded him with distinct disapproval. She had brown hair, gray eyes, and a perfectly average face and figure—the kind of woman he’d never usually bother to look at for longer than it took to pass her by. She also looked as if she’d slept in a barn. A vague alarm flickered in his memory as he focused on her rather prominent nose.

“Good morning, brother,” she said. “How is your headache today?”

“Terrible. How’s yours?”

“I was too busy dealing with the mayhem to allow myself to have a headache, sir. I left that luxury to you.”

“It’s hardly my fault I got knocked out, is it?”

Mrs. Lacock put a cup of well-brewed tea at his elbow, and he thanked her.

“You seem to have managed well enough.”

Despite being distracted by the sizzling pile of gammon and eggs placed in front of him, Max thought he could hear her teeth grinding. She had quite a ferocious stare and the upper-class accent of a lady, which begged all kinds of interesting questions as to how they’d ended up together.