herself for some kind of criticism. Hadn’t Aunt Charity always said that her life in the army was not a suitable topic of conversation—indeed, forbidden her ever to mention it?
‘Then lead on,’ he said, picking up his valise in one hand and crooking his other arm for her to take. ‘And haggle to your heart’s content.’
She let out her breath in a whoosh of relief. And took his arm with pleasure. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had allowed her to be herself, let alone appeared to approve of it.
It felt as if she were stepping out of an invisible prison.
* * *
Morals, Gregory decided some time later that day, could be damned inconvenient things to possess. For if he didn’t have so many of them he could be making love to Miss Prudence Carstairs instead of engaging only in stilted conversation.
He’d been thinking about making love to her ever since she’d flung back her head and started singing. That rich, melodious voice had stroked down his spine like rough velvet. And had made him see exactly why sailors leaped into the sea and swam to the rock on which the Sirens lived. Not that she’d been intentionally casting out lures, he was sure. For one thing she’d been covered from neck to knee by his jacket, whereas the Sirens were always depicted bare-breasted.
Ah, but he knew that her breasts were unfettered beneath his jacket and her gown. He had her stays in his valise to prove it. Which knowledge had given him no option but to take himself off for a brisk walk while reciting the thirteen times table. Fortunately he’d just about retained enough mental capacity to keep half an eye on her, and had made it to her side before those three drunken young fops had done more than give her a bit of a fright.
He’d have liked to have given them a fright. How dared they harass an innocent young woman? A woman under his protection? He could cheerfully have torn them limb from limb.
Though who, his darker self had kept asking, had appointed him her guardian? To which he had replied that he’d appointed himself. And he knew of no higher authority.
Besides, what else was he to do after the way she’d rushed to him and hugged him and said she’d never been so pleased to see anyone in her life? Nobody had ever been that pleased to see him. He hadn’t known how to react. And so he’d stood there, stunned, for so long that eventually she had flinched away, thinking he hadn’t liked the feel of her arms round him.
Whereas the truth was that he’d liked her innocent enthusiasm for him far too much. Only his response had been far from innocent. Which put him in something of a dilemma. She wasn’t the kind of girl a man could treat as a lightskirt. For one thing she came from the middling classes. Every man knew you didn’t bed girls from the middling classes. One could bed a lower class girl, for the right price. Or conduct a discreet affair with a woman from the upper classes, who’d think of it as sport.
But girls from the middling class were riddled with morals. Not that there was anything wrong with morals, as a rule. It was just that right now he wished one of them didn’t have so many. If only Prudence didn’t hail from a family with Methodist leanings, who called their daughters things like Prudence and Charity. Or if only he wasn’t fettered by his vow to protect her. Or hadn’t told her of his vow to protect her.
Or if only she hadn’t gone so damned quiet, leaving him to stew over his own principles to the extent that he was now practically boiling over.
What was the matter with her? Earlier on she’d been a most entertaining companion. He’d enjoyed watching her haggle her way through the market. She’d even induced many of the stallholders to let her sample their wares, so that they’d already eaten plenty, in tiny increments, by the time they’d left the town with what they’d actually purchased.
But for a while now she’d been trudging along beside him, her head down, her replies to his few attempts to make conversation monosyllabic.
Had he done something to offend her?
Well, if she thought he was going to coax her out of the sullens, she could think again. He didn’t pander to women’s moods. One never knew what caused them, and when they were in them nothing a man did was going to be right. So why bother?
‘How far?’ she suddenly said, jolting him from his preoccupation with morals and the vexing question of whether they were inconvenient encumbrances to a man getting what he wanted or necessary bars to descending into depravity. ‘How far is it to wherever you’re planning to take me?’
‘Somewhat further than I’d thought,’ he replied testily. When people talked about distances as the crow flies, the pertinent fact was that crows could fly. They didn’t have to tramp round the edges of muddy fields looking for gates or stiles to get through impenetrable hedges, or wander upstream and down until they could find a place to ford a swiftly running brook.
‘So when do you think we might arrive?’
He glanced at the sky. ‘It looks as though the weather is going to stay fair. It should be a clear night. If we keep going we might make it some time before dawn tomorrow.’
She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
‘Prudence?’ He looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time since they’d left the outskirts of town. ‘Prudence, you aren’t crying, are you?’
She wiped her hand across her face and sniffed. ‘No, of course not,’ she said.
‘Of course not,’ he agreed, though she clearly was. Which gave him a strange, panicky sort of feeling.
There must be something seriously wrong for a woman like Prudence to start weeping. A woman who’d been abandoned by her guardians, left to the care of a total stranger, had thought up the notion of singing for pennies with which to buy provisions so he could keep back his gold watch for emergencies, and then gone toe to toe with him about how to spend money she was proud of having earned herself—no, that wasn’t the kind of person who burst into tears for no good reason.
Was it?
‘Look, there’s a barn over there,’ he said, pointing across the rise to the next field. ‘We can stop there for the night if you like,’ he offered, even though he’d vowed only two minutes earlier not to pander to her mood. After all, it wasn’t as if she was crying simply to get attention. On the contrary, she looked more as though she was ashamed of weeping, and was trying to conceal her tears behind sniffles and surreptitious face-wiping.
‘You will feel much more the thing in the morning.’
‘Oh.’
She lifted her head and pushed a handful of wayward curls from her forehead in a gesture that filled him with relief. Because when they’d first set out she’d done so at regular intervals. Without a bonnet, or a hairbrush to tame her curls, they rioted all over her face at the slightest provocation. But as the day had worn on she’d done so less and less. She’d been walking for the last hour with her head hanging down, watching her feet rather than looking around at the countryside through which they were trudging.
‘Well, I don’t mind stopping there if you wish to rest,’ she said.
She was drooping with exhaustion, but would rather suffer in silence than admit to weakness.
All of a sudden a wave of something very far from lust swept through him. It
