me lean on your shoulder, I’m sure I could manage to walk.’
‘It would take all night,’ he told her and strode along the forest path with her in his arms as easily as if it was clear daylight.
‘It’s unladylike,’ she muttered as she listened for the almost silent pad of Atlas’s feet on the forest floor, surprised to find she already liked the huge animal and wanted his warmth and proximity as she didn’t dare covet that of his master.
‘Probably, but we don’t worry too much about such delicate notions out here in the wilds,’ he told her as if familiar with the dictates of polite society, which seemed unlikely.
Come to think of it, she’d taken him for one of her own kind when he first spoke and perhaps that accounted for this feeling she could finally relax and let a gentleman take care of her. It had been a very trying day, she assured herself, and she was probably wishing the world was how she wanted it to be. If she got through the night in one piece, no doubt it would lurch back to its proper order by morning. For now it felt oddly pleasant to be borne along in a strong man’s arms. She could feel powerful muscles and sinews few gentlemen of her acquaintance could boast as she settled against his broad shoulder with a contented sigh.
‘There,’ he said at last, as he rounded what seemed a deliberately serpentine last twist in the path and the faint glow of a small curtained window made her open her eyes wider. ‘As well it was no further, perhaps, or you would have been fast asleep,’ he whispered as he shifted her to open his door.
‘What a cosy room,’ she managed sincerely as she took in the still-glowing fire and companionable-looking chairs on either side of the fire.
Clearly his wife had gone to bed and that was why he was murmuring, for fear of waking her after a long day of hard work. She admired his consideration and let herself envy his lady for a moment, surprised how appealing the notion of being cared for by a very masculine husband at the end of a tiring day seemed to someone who’d never done a hard day’s work in her life.
‘It could do with being a little larger. With myself and Atlas to accommodate, one of us always ends up a little too far from the fire for comfort,’ he said and gently set her down in the smaller chair before she could demand to get there on her own one foot and a stick.
‘It seems truly comfortable to me,’ she admitted as she shivered at the idea of all that lay outside this warm room and how deeply uncomfortable her day had been so far.
‘We can argue about that when we try to decide how to find you a respectable place to sleep in such a confined space later,’ he told her as he sank to his knees in front of her and insisted on removing her stained shoe.
He gave her an impatient look when she batted his hand away from her torn stocking and insisted on undoing her own garter after he turned his back.
‘Done?’ he asked irritably and stared into the fire as if it annoyed him nearly as much as his uninvited guest.
‘Yes,’ she admitted, once she wasn’t biting her lip to conceal how much that small movement hurt her.
‘Good, now let me have a proper look at it,’ he said, as if mentally girding his loins for an unpleasant task. ‘This will probably hurt, but I would be grateful if you could manage not to scream, since my children are asleep upstairs. They would normally sleep through cannonfire, but I doubt a lady screeching at the top of her voice could fail to wake them and I don’t need more complications.’
So he had children, did he? He’d made no mention of his wife so it seemed likely he was a widower and she went back to wondering if she was as safe after all. Yet there was no air of menace to this man such as she had felt so terrifyingly earlier today from the highwaymen and, once or twice, on the dance floors of Mayfair when a so-called gentleman insisted on brushing too close as they moved through the figures of the dance together. This man might not overtly threaten a young lady’s honour, but he had surprising presence for the rough woodsman his clothes, cottage and everything but his voice proclaimed him to be. He sank to his knees in front of her again and she was determined to show him not all ladies screeched and fainted at the slightest provocation, or even, she revised with a muffled gasp, quite a lot of provocation.
He had dark-gold hair, she catalogued desperately, as the sickening pain of having her injury even this gently prodded surged through her with an oily chill. There was a touch of auburn to it in the firelight and it made for a distinctive contrast with the darkness of his brows and the golden tan of an outdoorsman under his end-of-day stubble of whiskers. He had strong rather than patrician features and a bony nose, but there was a hint of humour about his expressive mouth that saved his face seeming austere as a medieval monk’s.
Since she had avoided his gaze when they came into the mellow light of what smelt like a luxurious wax candle rather than the stink of tallow she expected, she had no idea of the colour of his eyes. Such faint light probably wouldn’t show it anyway, even if she somehow found the courage to meet his shrewdly assessing gaze, but he had the most amazingly long and thick dark lashes she had ever seen on a man. Meanwhile, the touch of his work-worn hand on her tender foot was surprisingly gentle and she let herself watch him prod and probe her poor battered feet to divert herself from the pain and noticed his fingers were long and sensitive, as well as clearly strong and very fit for whatever purpose he set them by day.
She took in the scent of him without the sort of indelicate snuffle she had allowed herself on smelling smoke from the blessed fire that was now thawing out her aching limbs when she was still in darkness and she decided he shared that oddly clean smell of wood-smoke and deep woodland she had appreciated with what she thought might be her last breath. Add to that a touch of soap and clean man and she concluded he washed of a night, perhaps at the same time as he bathed his children, so he could leap into action of a morning with only an early morning shave.
Only just restraining herself from adding touch to her exploration of him, she pulled her hand back in time not to explore his overlong thatch of curly hair and see if it felt as alive and wilful as she thought it must be under her probing fingers. Perhaps that was why he lived out here in the middle of nowhere, because the family who had made sure he was educated and taught the manners and speech of a gentleman then found they couldn’t control him either. He looked like a man who went his own way, so why would that way bring him to a humble woodsman’s cottage in the heart of the most remote forest he could find?
Everything about the man was a puzzle and when he met her eyes with cool resignation, she could see that he knew it. Whatever shade his eyes were there was no cruel, hot greed in them as there had been in the eyes of the men who attacked her coach today and those of her parliamentary suitor. She had been desperately frightened and on the verge of a very un-Freya-like attack of the vapours all day, but suddenly the world seemed to rock back on to its proper axis.
‘You’re probably wishing you’d never found me lying out there now,’ she said as he knelt at her feet like a subject king.
‘Shall we say you could prove a mixed blessing, Perdita, and leave it at that?’ he said as he rose to his feet and moved into what she presumed was a scullery from the cool air that wafted in and reminded her how much night there was out there to be terrified of.
‘Isn’t she the heroine of A Winter’s Tale?’ she questioned and caught herself presuming cottage dwellers didn’t read Shakespeare. ‘I’m sorry to sound so astonished,’ she added as he reappeared with a bowl and some rags. ‘Out here in the midst of nowhere, I dare say you read to pass the long winter hours when you cannot work.’
‘I dare say I do,’ he said uninformatively and she began to realise there were
