style="font-size:15px;"> And not just strange ones. She had followed the same routine every night at home, rising in time to move the chair and unlock the door before Polly came to her room—another reason to rise at six. She had forgotten that the maid would be on her side of the door while they were travelling.
‘This seems very cosy. Did you have a good supper?’
Blake listened to the low murmur of female voices from beyond the closed door as he settled back into his chair and reached for the cream jug to anoint the slice of pie that Jonathan had served him.
‘Eleanor doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive—no wonder she’s a beanpole,’ he said, keeping his voice down.
‘We make her nervous—which isn’t surprising.’ Jon finished his wine before tackling the pudding. ‘That might be what it is.’
‘She is bold enough when we are at a safe distance,’ Blake mused.
‘Probably she has had some unpleasant encounters with wandering hands in the past, or it is simply a maidenly aversion to masculinity,’ Jon suggested.
‘She damn nearly heaved me over her doorstep when I was there that first morning—although I suppose I was obviously in no state to offer her that sort of insult.’
The memory of Eleanor’s hasty retreat when it had become obvious that he could bandage his own wound, and her violent recoil when she had fallen against him and her hand had inadvertently touched his bare chest, seemed to confirm Jon’s opinion.
His body, hurting though it had been, had responded inexplicably to that touch, to that cool hand spread over his bare skin, and he had been glad when she had bolted from the room and left him to compose himself.
How laughable to be aroused by that—like some callow youth desperate for the touch of a woman...any woman. How very strange to recall the urge to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close. It hadn’t been sexual—more an instinct for comfort. He must have been in shock, because she was a most prickly female and he was not in need of...comfort.
That was definitely not something he was going to confide in Jonathan. He would never hear the last of it.
‘This is a decent claret. Let’s have another bottle.’
* * *
The next day was a repeat of the first. Ellie alternately read and wrote and gazed out of the window. Polly relaxed enough to put the dressing case down on the seat between herself and Jonathan and get out her tatting, and Blake and Jonathan worked, dozed and read.
No one teased anyone else, there were no hostile gibes—it was all remarkably comfortable, Blake thought. Positively domestic. He shook out the pages of the newspaper they had picked up at a stop in Birmingham and laughed at himself.
By noon the next day they were drawing to a halt in front of the Golden Crown inn in the middle of Stoke-on-Trent to take a light luncheon.
He watched Eleanor, worried again about how little she ate. Her lips, closing around the smooth, tight skin of a plum, were soft and pink and—
He jerked his gaze upwards and found those wide hazel eyes were focused on his face.
‘Have some more.’ He passed the bowl across. ‘They are very good.’
‘Thank you, no. I have had enough.’
In that steady gaze he could read discomfiture at his close attention and something else—something he could not identify. Or could he?
Blake found he was shifting uncomfortably in his chair, grateful for the all-concealing snowy expanse of tablecloth falling to his lap.
What? I am aroused by this woman? Damn it, celibacy—even for a few weeks—is really very bad for me indeed...
Jonathan cleared his throat and Blake jumped. So did Eleanor, who then gave herself an almost imperceptible little shake.
You too?
He almost said it out loud, then made a business of helping himself to fruit instead.
Well, why not?
Women had urges too, and those who said they did not had obviously had very little to do with women between the sheets. Just because a woman was on the shelf it did not mean that she was sexless. And Eleanor had too much dignity and reserve to make those kind of longings plain. If he had not lost himself in those rather lovely expressive eyes just now...
But it would be sensible to be wary. This business of chaperonage worked both ways—protecting men against scheming females just as much as it protected innocent girls from predatory men. That would be revenge for her stepbrother’s death indeed: entrapping the man she blamed for it into matrimony.
* * *
She would be delighted finally to arrive somewhere and be able to stop jolting around and living out of valises, Ellie concluded when they started off again.
She stared out of the windows as a succession of smoking chimneys, grimy streets and bulbous bottle kilns gave way to open fields. On the other hand, this was more comfortable than the stagecoach would have been, and much safer, and she was in no hurry to discover what awaited her in Lancashire.
Yesterday had been extraordinary. What had she seen in Blake’s eyes? Surely not desire? For her? There had been heat, and almost a question, rapidly followed by him diverting those penetrating grey eyes to a close study of a dish of apples.
If she was not a victim of her own torrid imagination then she ought to be wary. Very wary. And yet she could not feel threatened by him, and that was most strange. But then he had been at a safe distance, and she’d had her Dutch courage in the shape of a glass of wine.
The crack and the lurch came some twenty minutes after they had left the town, just as the coach turned a sharp corner going uphill.
For a second she thought the wheel had simply slipped into a rut, but then the lurch became a slide and the carriage tipped. There was a shout from the coachman, Polly’s piercing shriek, hands reaching for her—and then the world turned upside down as the whole vehicle fell over and all went black.
* * *
‘Stop screaming!’ Blake rasped, and the girl wedged against his side subsided into terrified gulps. Where the hell was Eleanor? Her silence was worse than the maid’s panic. ‘Polly? Polly, listen to me. I can’t turn over—something is on my back. Can you look up? Can you see the door?’
‘Yes...yes, my lord.’
‘Are you injured? Can you move? Climb out?’
‘It hurts...’ The whimper turned into a determined sniff. ‘Not anything broken, I don’t think. I can try. It’s Mr Wilton, my lord, over your back. He’s unconscious and his head’s bleeding.’ She sniffed again and her voice wavered. ‘Not...not spurting, my lord. I’ll try and wriggle past him.’
Blake braced himself against
