The hopeful smile faded. ‘You won’t say nowt to missus, will you? About us waking you. We are supposed to be quiet.’
With a sense of unreality, Charlie shook his head. ‘Thank you for the fire.’
The older of the two narrowed her gaze. ‘How come you left all the candles burning? Not scared of the dark, are you?’
Scared didn’t come close to describing the insidious panic he felt in the hours before dawn. He grinned. ‘I fell asleep reading.’ He gestured to the book on the night table, placed there in case of such questions.
‘Waste of good beeswax, that is,’ she muttered and flounced out of the room.
The other girl followed, lugging the coal bucket and a dustpan and brush.
Charlie collapsed against the pillows and let out a laugh. There was no mistaking the sort of fires those women preferred to light and it had nothing to do with hearths and coals.
He should have guessed from the style of Merry’s dress and her lapses of speech that the damned woman was a brothel keeper.
An abbess. And one with enemies? Overnight he’d been thinking about that broken axle.
Another look at her carriage was required, but this latest piece of information added to his suspicions about her supposed accident. It wasn’t one.
He glanced around the room. The candles augmented by light from the window illuminated a carved and tapestry-hung nightmare of a room in every shade of green. It looked worse than it had the previous evening.
He threw back the covers and slipped from the bed. He strode to the window. He’d left the curtains open, too, as well as the bed curtains. Unending white accounted for the unnatural light. He frowned at the sky. While the clouds seemed less lowering, he doubted the roads would be passable.
And he was stuck in a house of ill repute. A joke Robert would have loved. Charlie didn’t find it in the least bit humorous. She should have told him last night instead of her pretending to be respectable—well, almost respectable.
A vision of Merry’s lovely slender leg in his hand popped into his brain. The arousal that had tormented him the previous evening, and upon awakening, started anew. He cursed. He’d behaved like a perfect gentleman with a woman who kept a bawdy house. What a quixotic fool she must have thought him.
He turned away from the window at the sound of the chamber door opening. Brian with boots in hand. The lad bowed deeply. ‘Good morning, my lord. Mr Gribble said to tell you the snow on the moors is really deep.’
‘I guessed as much. You don’t need to stay. I can manage.’
The lad looked so crestfallen at the dismissal, Charlie relented. ‘Brush my claret-coloured coat and then iron my cravat, if you wouldn’t mind.’
The lad touched his forelock. ‘Reet gladly, my lord.’
In less than an hour, Charlie was hunching his shoulders against a wind stronger than the previous evening and holding fast to his hat brim. The drifting snow came close to the top of his boots as he slogged down a hill to the stables. Set around three sides of a square courtyard, the building offered welcome shelter from the gale. He entered through the first door he came to and almost bumped into a fellow coming out. Not a groom. Of course not. It was Miss Draycott in a man’s low-crowned hat and her mannish driving coat.
Charlie raised his hat and smiled. ‘Good morning. I didn’t expect to see you up and about at this early hour.’
After the startled look faded from her expression, she frowned. Not pleased to see him. ‘I didn’t think London dandies rose from their bed before noon.’
‘Mr Brummell has given us all a very bad reputation,’ Charlie said mournfully. He knocked the snow off his boots against the door frame. ‘I came to see how the horses were doing.’ No sense in alarming her, when he had nothing but vague suspicions.
‘Don’t you trust my servants to take proper care of your animals, my lord?’
My, her temper was ill today. ‘If I didn’t trust your servants, Miss Draycott, I would have come out here last night.’
She acknowledged the hit with a slight nod.
‘I also wondered about your team. How is that foreleg?’
Her shoulders slumped. ‘Not good. Jed poulticed it, but it is badly swollen.’
‘Do you mind if I look?’
‘Not at all.’ She sounded quite doubtful. Probably thought he wouldn’t know one end of the beast from the other. Nor would he indicate otherwise. The fact that he liked working with horses was no one’s business but his own.
They walked along the stable block. A single row of stalls built along each back wall, nice drainage, fresh straw and a surprising number of mounts, both riding and draught. He nodded his approval.
The carriage horses were in the middle block. The wrinkled wizened man who’d met them with the lantern the previous evening stood leaning on a broom, watching the injured horse eat.
‘Jed, this is Lord Tonbridge,’ Merry said.
He knuckled his forehead. ‘Aah. Yours are reet fine animals, yer lordship. Two stalls down they are.’
‘Thank you. Miss Draycott is concerned about this one. May I see?’
The old fellow ran a knowing eye down his person. ‘Well, if you don’t mind mucking in the midden, you’re reet welcome.’
Charlie inched in beside the horse and sank down on his haunches. The groom had packed a mixture of warm mash and liniment around the injured foreleg. ‘How bad do you think it is?’
‘No more’n a strain, I reckon.’
‘He got hooked up in the traces,’ Miss Draycott said. ‘I hope he didn’t do any permanent damage.’
So, she’d followed him back. That was going to make his questioning of the head groom difficult.
‘Have you tried packing it with snow?’ Charlie asked.
Jed scratched at the grey stubble on his chin. ‘Never heard of that for a strain.’
Charlie grinned. ‘Nor I. My groom discovered it takes the swelling down faster than warm mash, if you want to try it. Little else to be done apart from plenty of rest.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt to try, would it, Jed?’ Merry said quietly. ‘I feel so badly. Not once in my life have I ever injured one of my horses.’
She sounded dreadfully guilty. Charlie wanted to put an arm around her shoulders and offer her comfort, then press her up against the stable wall and offer a bit more than that, she looked so starkly beautiful with her hair tucked up under her ridiculous hat.
‘'T’was my fault,’ Jed said. ‘I should have seen somat were up wi’carriage. I should never have let you drive alone.’
‘No, you should not,’
