to be hanged in five days’ time. Fear ran through her, knotting her stomach.
‘What happened? Who did it?’
‘You believe me?’ He sounded incredulous, as though he had not expected this reaction.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Why? Why should you believe me, Kat?’
Katherine thought about it. ‘Instinct? I trusted you from the beginning, I am not sure why. I look into your eyes and I see the truth. I am used to living with a weak man, one who lies and twists. I believe I can recognise a strong and an honest one when I meet him.’
Nick flushed, half-turned from her, running his hand over his face as though to smother some emotion her trust evoked. ‘Thank you for that.’
‘So what happened?’ she prompted.
‘I had just returned from France. I had been on the continent for some time and it was years since I had been in England. I went first to Aylesbury, hoping that an old friend was still there, but they told me he had moved away long ago. I decided to go to London, it seemed as good a place as any while I thought about what to do next.
‘Just outside Hemel Hempstead the road runs over an area of rough grazing beside the river, called Box Moor. It had been a filthy day—wet, driving rain and cold with it. It got dark early and I was trying to decide whether to push on to King’s Langley or turn off to Hemel Hempstead when I saw an inn ahead. Not much of a place, certainly not somewhere gentry frequent, and when I walked in I thought either they or I were drunk.’
‘Why?’ Katherine reached for the wine bottle and poured herself a glass without thinking. His voice was easy to listen to, strong yet well modulated. Nick removed the wine from her hand, topped up his own glass and put the bottle out of reach.
‘They recognised me. For a few seconds people turned as if to greet me, hands were raised, the landlord reached for a tankard and began to draw ale without being asked. A pretty barmaid ran over and gave me a kiss.’
‘But did they know you?’
‘No, of course not. The moment I stepped out of the shadows into the light of the bar it all changed. Shoulders were turned, men went back to their cards and their pipes. Even the barmaid flounced off.’
‘Then what happened?’ Katherine was so engaged with the story and the wine was so warm in her veins that she forgot her reticence at being alone with Nicholas. It felt like being alone with an old friend.
‘I asked for a room and stabling for my horse. The landlord was reluctant, surly even. If it had not been such a foul night, I would have walked out and found another lodging. I wish I had! But I persisted and eventually the girl showed me to a room. Not much of one, but it would do. I saw my horse settled and had a meal. The atmosphere was strange; they were uneasy, as though waiting for something, and people would slip out and come back in again.’
‘Um, the privy?’ Katherine suggested.
‘That is what I thought at the time. Then it all went very quiet. The barmaid brought me a beaker of rum. It was to help me sleep, she said, because it was such a rough night.’
‘You drank it and it was drugged?’
‘It was. I made my way upstairs, wondering why my legs were so weary, but I put it down to the long ride. I pulled off my clothes, I think. I can remember falling on the bed, then nothing until I was shaken awake.’
‘By whom?’ Katherine swallowed with tension.
‘A captain of dragoons, two of his men, the local magistrate and his parish constable. The magistrate had a bandage round his head and was in a towering rage. It seems he had just been held up at gunpoint on the Moor by Black Jack Standon, scourge of those parts, and had been hit on the head and lightened of his watch, card case and rings. The man had become such a menace over the past few months that the dragoons had been stationed in the vicinity to catch him and the magistrate put them hot on his heels.’
‘But why did they think you were he?’ Katherine demanded. ‘A perfectly respectable traveller …’
‘A man bearing a close resemblance to a tall, dark, black-eyed highwayman. And a man, apparently drunk on rum, slumped on a bed in a shady inn known to be one of Black Jack’s haunts. My clothes and all my possessions had gone and I was dressed in the clothes you saw me in today. My horse had vanished and in its place was a distinctive black gelding with one white foot and a white blaze. Black Jack’s horse. The barmaid put on a particularly good act, throwing herself on my chest and sobbing that I was not Black Jack. Naturally that looked as suspicious as hell.’
‘But you told them who you were? Surely your friends …’ Once again the light went out of his eyes, just as it had when she had asked him about his dependents. Katherine watched the strong line of his jaw tense before he answered.
‘There is no one. Everything I had to prove my identity had gone. The trial was a foregone conclusion and so was the verdict.’
‘So Black Jack escaped the dragoons. And all he has to do is lie low for another week or so …’
‘Five days to be precise, as of noon tomorrow.’
‘Why are you not angry?’ Katherine demanded. Fury was building in her on his behalf. ‘The coward might just as well have shot you in the back!’
Nick shrugged. ‘Anger will not do me any good. He was caught like a rat in a trap and got out of it with some quick thinking. It was just his good fortune that I have no way of proving who I am. Most people would have been shown to be innocent within days; as it is, the hunt will be off—he could not have predicted it.’ He looked keenly at her. ‘Now, Kat, don’t cry. Why are you crying?’
‘Because I am angry,’ she said, rubbing furiously at her eyes with her handkerchief and glaring at him, defying him to read any other emotion into her sudden spurt of tears. He looked back, an amused smile tugging the corners of what she was increasingly aware was a very sensual mouth. His eyes were dark and steady on her and she swallowed. He was a very attractive man. A very big, very masculine man and any minute he was going to …
‘I think we should go to bed, Kat.’
She had been expecting it all evening, knew it was inevitable; still she could not suppress the little gasp of alarm.
‘Kat, I said we should go to bed, not anything else. We can talk if you like or we can go to sleep, but that is all, I promise.’
‘You don’t want to—’ Her voice failed her.
‘Make love to you? Yes, of course I want to,’ he said matter of factly. ‘I am a man, you are a very attractive young lady who just happens to be my wife. But I have no intention of forcing an unwilling woman.’
‘You would not be—I mean, I would not be.’ Katherine swallowed. This was very difficult. ‘We had a bargain. I am resolved to honour my side of it. How else can I repay you?’
‘With a daily supply of plum cake for a week?’
‘Do not laugh at me!’
‘I am not, I respect your courage and your sense of honour. I should not have said what I did
