Page 20 of A Much Maligned Miss

He enjoyed an excellent dinner. After the roasted duck, he ate a fine steamed pudding covered in thick treacle followed by a pot of strong coffee. The food was good and plentiful and the private parlor comfortable with its roaring fire. After his meal, he smoked two cigarettes and drank a glass of brandy. Only then did his thoughts turn to his bed and the inhabitant currently lying in it.

Hopefully, she would be soundly sleeping by this point. He was not keen on maidenly displays of virtue, and if Miss Halperston felt herself imposed upon, then she could come downstairs and sleep on a hard bench next to the other travelers unable to secure a bed. He most certainly would not be! He could hear one of them snoring from across the corridor.

Getting up from his chair, he crossed to the window and looked out at the icy courtyard. The moon was waxing gibbous. He watched one of the grooms cross to the stables with a jug of beer. Very likely they would be playing a round of cards out there, he reflected, breathing smoke out of his nostrils. Discarding the last of his cigarette into the dwindling fireplace, he decided he would go and join them for a hand or two.

*

Caroline woke in the early hours of the morning and lay very still trying to determine if her head was still throbbing. When a tentative turn of her neck resulted in neither a blinding flash of pain nor the impairment of her vision, she started to feel cautiously optimistic. Lifting her head from the pillow, she surveyed the darkened room about her but could make out very little in the murky morning light.

The previous evening was a mere blur. She had vague recollections of a kindly older woman helping her with her buttons and easing her nightgown over her head. Oh, and a maid who had helped her brush her teeth and to take down her hair.

Suddenly, she remembered being extremely unwell and Lord Atherton producing a bowl for her to vomit into. She groaned faintly. Was the man to bear witness to every lowering moment of her life? Was preserving the merest scrap of dignity around him really too much to ask? Apparently so, she reflected glumly.

She wondered what o’clock it was. Around five or six in the morning, she guessed, looking at the gray light streaming through the window. Probably closer to five as she could hear no servants moving about to begin their day as yet. They would surely start early in a busy coaching inn such as this one.

Vague memories of just how crowded it had been last night flitted through her mind. Had Lord Atherton really been forced to carry her up a flight of stairs for the second time in two days? Warmth crept into her cheeks. Really, it seemed she was destined to make a fool of herself whenever he was around!

A rustling sound startled her, and she realized she was not the sole occupant of the bed. Caroline held her breath as her thoughts raced. It was not wholly unexpected, she told herself. You sometimes did have to share quarters at these places.

Once when the snow had been very bad one January, she and Edgar had been forced to put up at an inn overnight, and she had spent a night sleeping in a bed with two giggling farmer’s daughters, while poor Edgar had to share with Lake. She had had the better bargain, for Edgar had complained the next morning that Lake had been extremely flatulent.

The only reason she now suffered the smallest frisson of fear was the ridiculous possibility that Lord Atherton’s intentions might not be altogether honorable toward her. Laughable really, Caroline told herself firmly. She might be fleeing the protection of her family, but she was no tender maiden ripe for the plucking.

Seduction must be the furthest thing from his mind after seeing her conduct the past two days, she reflected wryly. First, she had acted in a wholly bizarre and most improper fashion in front of him, and then she had been violently unwell. Just one of these two shocking incidents would be enough to give a sensible man a lively disgust of her, let alone two!

Even in her Sunday best, Caroline had no illusions that she had impressed him with her person. He had not even danced with her last Christmas when she had been wearing a new gown with her hair nicely arranged with ribbons and everything. Instead, she had been forced to insist he whirled her about the terrace on a bitter night in March.

No, she knew she had nothing to fear when it came to Lord Atherton turning amorous. She was merely being silly. At this point someone flung out an arm and gave a masculine grunt. Caroline blinked in the darkness. It could still be the stout older lady, she told herself uneasily. After all, it was hard to grunt in a ladylike fashion.

Then a dark shape stretched out on the coverlet and gave a faint meow. The arm moved again, and the cat started loudly to purr in tandem. Could it possibly be two cats? she wondered in amazement. Maybe she was sharing the landlady’s private bedchamber, and they were her pets, she reasoned.

At this point, the moon drifted outside the window, sending a shaft of light across the bed. Caroline’s supposing’s ground to a screeching halt as her disbelieving eyes fell upon Lord Atherton’s sleeping profile outlined in moonlight.

8

Gervaise awoke to the rattling of a teacup on a saucer. He squinted around to discover the offending party and found Caroline Halperston sitting in a chair by the window with a blanket draped over her.

“Good morning,” she greeted him serenely. “This ginger tea is actually quite good.”

“I rather doubt that. Especially cold,” he answered dryly.

“In fact, it’s much better cold,” she asserted. “I tried the veriest sip of it last night to please—um—”

“Mrs. Dawkins,” he supplied.

“Mrs. Dawkins,” she repeated gratefully, “and it nearly made me gag. This morning, however, I am drinking it with relish.” She took another sip. “It is quite pleasingly fragrant.”

“It sounds horrible,” Gervaise responded waspishly. “And moreover, I strongly object to being woken by your impromptu tea party at this ungodly hour.”

“The clock just struck seven,” she answered mildly. “Am I to take it that you wake every morning in such irritable spirits, or is it only when you have spent the previous night with three bedfellows?”

“Three…?” he repeated uncomprehendingly.

She gestured toward him with her teacup. “You are perhaps unaware, my lord, that you currently have two kittens sleeping on your chest.”

Gervaise blinked down at the black and gray balls of fluff curled up on his person. “Ah yes, they had momentarily slipped my mind,” he admitted.

“You acquired two cats somehow overnight?” she enquired with interest.