Chapter Eight
Annie Burrows
Once again, my thanks to the Novelistas
for constant support, brainstorming when
necessary, and cake.
‘Vile seducer of women!’
Gregory winced and pulled the quilt up over his ears. What kind of inn was this? Surely even travellers to such a Godforsaken backwater shouldn’t have to put up with deranged females bursting into their rooms and screeching at them before breakfast?
‘Oh! What wickedness!’
Pulling the quilt up round his ears clearly wasn’t a strong enough hint that deranged females weren’t welcome in his room. For the voice was definitely getting louder. Coming closer.
‘What is the world coming to?’
Just what he’d like to know, he thought resentfully, dragging his eyelids open and seeing the owner of the strident voice standing right over him, jabbing a bony finger at his face.
‘How could you?’ the bony-fingered, screeching woman shouted into his face. Right into his face.
Enough was enough. He knew that public inns were of necessity frequented by...well, by the public. But surely even here a man was entitled to some privacy? At least in his own bedchamber?
‘Who,’ he said, in the arctic tone that normally caused minions to shake in their shoes, ‘let you into my room?’
‘Who let me into your room? Why, I let myself in, of course.’ She smote her breast theatrically. ‘Never have I been so shocked!’
‘Well, if you will invade a man’s chamber what can you expect?’
‘Oh!’ the woman cried again, this time laying the back of one hand across her brow. ‘Was ever there such a villain? Truly, your soul must be stained black with depravity if you can treat the seduction of innocence with such levity!’
Seduction of innocence? The woman must be fifty if she was a day. And she’d invaded his room. Nothing innocent about that.
‘And as for you!’ The screeching woman’s finger moved to a point somewhere to his left side. ‘You...you trollop!’
Trollop? There was a trollop in his bed as well as a hysterical woman standing next to it?
A brief foray with his left foot confirmed that, yes, indeed there was another pair of legs in his bed. A slender pair of legs.
