swagger in his walk. He gave her a lusty perusal, his mind holding lewd thoughts. Reaching out with his gnarled hand, he gave her hood a firm tug with a gesture that was at once peremptory. ‘I’m Handsome,’ he said.
She slapped down his hand with ill temper. ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
A roar of laughter shook his audience.
‘That’s got nothing to do with his looks,’ snarled the hatchet face. ‘It’s his name. Handsome, that’s what he’s called.’ He scowled at her. ‘Going far, are you?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact. To the coast. The doctor recommended it for—my health, you see.’ When the bearded rough made a move to touch her again, she glared at him. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You might have cause to regret it. I’ve been ill, you see, and I’m not completely recovered—smallpox, it was.’
The leader’s eyes narrowed as they flicked like a rat’s from Charles to Maria and back to Charles. ‘Is this true? She doesn’t look like she’s got much wrong with her.’
As if on cue, Maria calmly folded back her hood, relieved that they stood some distance away from her and that it was almost dark so they would just be able to make out the occasional spots of rouge she had dabbed on her face, hoping fervently they resembled pock marks.
The rabble gave a collective gasp and backed away, each and every one of them having a horror of contracting that often fatal, disfiguring disease.
Apart from a slight raising of his eyebrows when he looked at her, Charles’s expression didn’t alter. ‘My wife does not lie,’ Charles remarked, joining in the pretence. ‘As you see, she is not marred quite as severely as some are, but the doctor advised her against coming into direct contact with others for fear she might still carry the infection. Maria, get back inside the carriage.’ He issued the order without taking his eyes off the rabble. She hesitated, but only for a moment, for there was a steely edge to his voice she would ignore at her peril.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ Charles said pleasantly, ‘you will have the goodness to go home to your wives and children. If you refuse, you will leave me with no alternative but to blow your brains out.’
The pistol levelled at them, and one other held by a steady hand in the doorway of the coach, was persuasion enough.
‘From the look of the Seigneur’s home, you have done enough mischief this day,’ Charles said, softly. ‘I have not done any hunting lately, which is a sport I always enjoy, so do not follow me.’
Then he spun on his heel and walked back to the coach, moving calmly and without haste. The rabble didn’t follow him. He had known they wouldn’t—although he didn’t know whether that was down to the fear of being shot or contracting Maria’s feigned smallpox.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked when he had settled himself across from her and ordered Pierre to drive on, putting the beacon of the burning villa behind them.
She nodded. ‘When you got out of the coach, I counted each breath as though it were my last.’
‘It could well have been. I told you to stay inside the coach.’
‘I know, but I had to do something. I was terrified.’
‘It took courage not to show it. It was also ingenious of you to feign smallpox.’ He handed her a handkerchief. ‘You can wipe them off now. They have served their purpose.’ He glanced down at her hand. ‘You found my other pistol, I see. Can you use it?’
‘Yes, if I have to,’ she replied, rubbing hard at the rouge on her face. ‘One of the grooms at the chateau taught me how to shoot.’
‘Which may come in useful, who knows? But hear me well, Maria.’ His voice was like ice and his eyes held a terrifying menace as very quietly, very deliberately, he said, ‘Unless you have a death wish, don’t ever do anything like that again. By your reckless action you could have got us all killed. It was stupid. How dare you disobey me?’
Feeling the frigid blast of his gaze, reflexively, to her consternation and fury, Maria felt her cheeks grow hot and found herself shrinking into the upholstery, then checked herself and met his look head-on.
‘Disobey you?’ she repeated, indignant. ‘If I did that then I am very sorry, but I think it was my quick thinking that saved us, not your pistol.’
‘However it may have looked to you, I had the situation under control. How can any man make a cool-headed decision that he knows may involve grave risk, while the woman he is trying to protect has ideas of her own—ideas that could have jeopardised everything?’
She wanted to shout at him, to tell him how frightened she had been for him, but the words froze on her lips; instead she said, ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Obviously. When I give an order, I don’t expect it to be questioned. That’s a matter of principle with me.’ His voice rang with authority. He saw Maria stiffen with angry confusion. ‘Don’t you dare defy me again.’
Before Charles’s eyes, Maria’s expressive face went from shock to fury, and then she coldly turned her face away from him. He stared at her profile, furious because, by her actions, the situation could have turned very ugly. But most of all he was furious with himself for failing to anticipate that such a scene with the rabble might occur, and for not taking steps to avert it by instructing Pierre to take the longer route to avoid the village, such had been his haste to get to the hostelry before nightfall.
He wondered grimly how it was possible that he could intimidate those he employed into doing his bidding with a single glance, and yet he could not seem to force one young, stubborn, defiant girl to behave. She was so damned unpredictable that she made it impossible to anticipate her reaction to anything. But then again, he thought, a feeling of admiration for the courage she had shown coming to the fore, the idea of feigning smallpox had been clever.
As they neared the inn where they would spend the night, he glanced at her, belatedly realising how terrified she must have been on finding herself confronted by a band of miscreants who had just set fire to a house with its inhabitants still inside. With a twinge of pity and reluctant admiration, he admitted that she was also very young, very frightened and very brave. Any other woman might well have given way to hysterics, rather than coolly confronting the rabble and implying that she could infect them all with smallpox as Maria had done.
On reaching the inn, Pierre drove the coach through the arched gateway and brought the steaming horses to a halt. Charles was the first to alight. Turning, he reached up and held out his hand to assist Maria, noting as he did so that her lovely face was stiff, and she was carefully avoiding meeting his eyes.
His gaze swept the bustling inn yard. ‘Unfortunately we have not reserved rooms so we will have to take what’s on offer.’
Maria turned to him. ‘I would appreciate it if you would engage alternative accommodation for yourself tonight, Charles,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t care what interpretation Pierre or anyone else puts on a husband and wife having separate rooms—make any excuse you like, but tonight I would like my privacy.’
‘As you wish.’
Maria was relieved he didn’t object, but then Charles seemed to have a trick of wiping all expression from his face when he wished, and it was difficult to know what he felt or thought.
Noise
