Chapter Ten

 

 

 

Twenty minutes later Hal strode back into the yard. He brushed hair from his coat with an irritated swipe as he took a letter from his pocket ‘John, I want you to go back to London. Take this letter to Mr Fanshaw. He will be a very worried man and I want to reassure him and thank him for the loan of his horses.’

‘But, Your Grace…’ The look on John’s face would have been almost comical in other circumstances. ‘Miss Sophie... She won’t be chaperoned at all. Not that I’m much of one, but I’m something.’

‘Take look off your face, John, and leave me to worry about Miss Haydon’s reputation,’ Hal said, not unkindly. ‘That young lady, I am beginning to discover, is more than capable of looking after herself.’

As he spoke a slim youth appeared at the door of the harness room, hat in hand. John shot a harassed glance at the stranger, then his jaw dropped as he recognised the russet hair, or what remained of it.

‘What the...? Miss Sophie, what will your mother say?’ he demanded.

‘Never mind that, John. Here, take this.’ Hal handed him the letter and a roll of banknotes. ‘When you’ve delivered that wait for my orders at the London house.’

Hal turned from watching John ride out of the yard, back rigid with disapproval, to find Sophie competently checking the length of the stirrups before leading the grey mare to the mounting block and getting into the saddle.

‘This is not, I assume, the first time you have ridden astride?’ he remarked as he mounted in turn.

‘No.’ Sophie’s chin came up. ‘I am a perfectly competent rider. When I was living on the estate in Hertfordshire I asked the head groom to teach me and I used to ride astride daily.’

‘And I suppose no considerations of propriety, or the protestations of your brother’s servants, made a ha’porth of difference,’ Hal commented drily as he gathered up the reins and urged his horse out of the yard.

‘George told me I should fill my time profitably, so I did. I learned a great many useful things.’ Sophie kicked her heels and trotted up alongside him. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To the nearest turnpike. And when we get to the gate, stay back and keep quiet.’

‘Yes, Your Grace, whatever you say, Your Grace,’ Sophie mocked in a Hertfordshire country accent, touching the brim of her hat.

Hal shot her a dark look and cantered off without a backward glance.

The keeper at the first pike gate on the road north looked a sensible, observant fellow. Hal leaned down to hand him a coin somewhat larger than the toll demanded and remarked casually, ‘Fine country around here. Must be good hunting.’

‘It is that, sir, thank you, sir.’ The man knuckled his forehead, slipped the coin into his pocket and handed over the ticket without any change.

‘I was hoping to see young Mr Justin Fanshaw while I was in this vicinity, but I understand he’s away from home and I just missed him. I only wish I’d thought to ask his new direction.’

‘The younger Mr Fanshaw was it, sir?’ The man rubbed his stubbled chin. ‘Haven’t seen him for a month or two. Mind you, I wasn’t on the gate all day yesterday. Clem!’

A younger version of the gatekeeper emerged from the toll booth and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Yes, Pa?’

‘You see Mr Justin Fanshaw yesterday?’

‘Yes, Pa, quite a surprise that was, didn’t know there was anyone up at the Lodge. Come by just after noon. I recall it because I’d that minute cut a hunk off the bacon hock for our dinner and when I got back the danged cat had stolen it. In a fine chaise Mr Justin was, with a team of four harnessed up and two postillions. Very fine,’ he added slyly, ‘but not as fine as the young lady I saw looking out the coach window.’

‘Mind your tongue, boy.’ His father gave Hal a cautious look. ‘Which way did they go?’

‘Well, North, Pa, of course, or they wouldn’t have needed to pass this gate, would they?’ Clem’s tone was injured. ‘And he took a ticket for the next three gates, so I reckon they were heading for Newark for the night.’

Hal spun a coin to Clem, which the lad caught one-handed, then spurred on to the pike road at a canter, Sophie catching him up after a few strides.

 

They rode in silence for several miles. Sophie kept shooting glances at Hal’s set face and her spirits sunk lower and lower. At first she had been buoyed up by the success of her scheme, now she was not so sure it was a good idea. She was miles from home without any protection other than this man of whom she knew very little. She might like him, she was very attracted to him, might even have fantasies of being in love with him, but she did not know him, nor anyone else for a hundred miles around.

Eventually Hal reined back and let the horses walk. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence she asked, ‘Are you still angry with me?’

He looked at her for a long minute, then shook his head. ‘No, not angry with you. I am angry with myself. Hell.’ He snatched off his hat and raked his hand through his hair. ‘What am I doing, dragging you through the countryside like this? It was madness even to bring you as far as St Albans, but at least I expected to catch them there. But this! Look at yourself. What was I thinking of?’

‘Your sister,’ Sophie said tartly. ‘And I asked to come, it was my idea. So was cutting my hair and riding.’

‘The more I come to know you, the more reason I have for mistrusting your ideas,’ he retorted.

She looked away, blinking hard.

They rode in silence for a few minutes then, ‘Sophie. I am sorry.’

‘It is not as though I am any young lady,’ she said, still not looking at him. ‘I am probably the only one in London whose circumstances mean that I cannot be compromised any further by being alone in your company.’ She glanced at him. ‘I mean, in the absence of a married lady I am the safest...’

Her voice trailed away at the expression on Hal’s face. His eyebrows rose and his lips curved wickedly and she knew he was thinking about what had happened the night before. The blush rose up her throat, she could feel the heat of her skin above the neckerchief and suddenly she could not meet his eyes.

‘Twice ruined being no worse than once, Sophie?’ he asked, his tone mocking himself as much as her.

‘Absolutely,’ she retorted, nettled that he could make her feel like this. ‘I am enjoying my adventure before I have to go back home to George and Lavinia.’

‘And respectable spinsterhood in Chelsea, as you told me?’ Hal teased. Then Sophie pulled a face at him and he laughed.

 

The long ride up the Great North Road passed uneventfully with news of the fugitives at several of the toll bars along the way. But it was the furthest that Sophie had ever ridden and she was sore and bone-weary by the time they walked the tired horses off the market place and into the yard of the Clinton Arms in Newark.

To maintain her pretence of being a youth Hal left her to dismount and Sophie threw her leg over the saddle and swung down, her knees giving way as her feet met the solid ground so she had to grip the saddle to stay upright. Stiffly she limped after Hal and found him negotiating with the landlord.

‘Only one chamber free, sir. It’s late now and if you’d been here two hours ago, then you could have had your pick. But the lad can bed down with the ostlers, can’t he?’

Sophie gave a muted squeak of alarm, but Hal intervened smoothly. ‘I prefer him to sleep in my room, not be sitting up drinking ale, or worse, with the ostlers. I want him sober in the morning or I’ll never get any work out of him.’

‘Very well, sir. I'll have a truckle bed set up for him.’

‘And hot water and a bath,’ Hal added. ‘Send that up at once and I will dine afterwards.’

The room they were shown to was spacious with old beams and a view over the market square. The main bed was a four poster with heavy curtains and the servants pulled out a low truckle bed from beneath it. After a few minutes two sweating potboys staggered upstairs with a hip bath and several buckets of steaming water and set them down with a thud on the wooden boards.

Sophie stood and fidgeted by the window, pretending to be admiring the view of the famous towering spire of the church. Anything to avoid looking at that big bed, or the bath, or Hal.

When he spoke it was so sudden that she jumped. ‘I am going downstairs for a drink and to order our dinner. You bathe while I am gone. Don’t be long about it, I’d rather find some hot water left when it's my turn.’

The door shut briskly behind him, leaving Sophie staring at the bath. The men had set it down before the fire with a pile of rough, but clean, linen towels beside it. Giving herself a shake she poured in water, dragged a battered leather screen from the corner of the room around the tub and began to take off her clothes. Her weary limbs protested at the effort, but that pain was as nothing to the shock of hot water on her blistered heels and sore bottom.

‘Ouch,’ she complained to the empty chamber. ‘That hurts!’ But the warmth soon soothed both the soreness and the aches. In fact she felt quite deliciously relaxed. If she could just close her eyes for a few minutes…

 

Hal entered the darkened room twenty minutes later. There had been no response to his tap and when he looked around he could see no sign of Sophie. ‘Drat the girl,’ he muttered under his breath as he took up the one taper in the sconce by the door and touched it to the branch of candles standing on the dresser. ‘Still, I suppose she cannot come to much harm in the middle of Newark at this hour.’ The light was failing enough to make her disguise reasonably convincing, but it was not so dark as to be dangerous.

He shucked off his clothes, stretching his stiff shoulders before he crossed to the screen, one of the remaining jugs of now cooling water in his hand. He must have knocked against the screen as he rounded the corner, for it fell with a thud on to the boards, revealing Sophie, as naked as the day she was born, blinking wildly at the sudden awakening.

‘Bloody hell!’ Hal backed away, the pitcher strategically placed to preserve what decency he could.

Sophie gave a shriek and grabbed a square of linen to cover herself. There was a moment’s appalled silence as they stared at each other, then Hal felt his shoulders begin to shake. He fought it for a moment then, with a shout of laughter he flapped a bed curtain around himself and put down the water jug before that went everywhere. Still laughing, he collapsed on to the bed with his back to her.

‘It is not funny!’ Sophie stormed at him. He could hear her scrambling out of the bath, water slopping everywhere.

‘I am sorry,’ Hal finally managed to say from the shelter of the bed curtain. ‘But your face...’

‘I might have looked funny, but it was nothing compared to you trying to conceal your...your...body...with that jug.’

He choked on another laugh and that clearly did nothing to cool her temper. Hal heard Sophie stamp her foot, splashing her feet in what must be a puddle of bath water on the boards.

‘May I come out now?’ Hal ventured cautiously.

‘No you may not. You are sitting on my clothes.’

‘Well, pull a sheet off the truckle bed,’ he suggested. Thank God he’d tossed his own clothes onto the bed. He found his breeches and dragged them on.

There was a snort of fury and the sound of a sheet being jerked off the other bed. ‘Now you may come out,’ she said. ‘If you are decent.’

Hal pushed through the bed curtains, shrugging on his shirt. The subdued light of the candles flickered over Sophie’s face and he saw her swallow hard, before she dropped her gaze to the floor. She flinched visibly. Apparently the sight of his bare feet was just as unsettling.

There was a moment’s silence, then Hal walked around the foot of the four-poster bed and tugged the remaining curtains across to enclose it. ‘You had better get dressed,’ he said, in as neutral tone as he could manage. Hopefully she had not noticed the effect the sight of the tightened fabric on her damp body was having on him. ‘You will catch your death of cold wrapped only in that sheet.’

Sophie pulled the linen even more tightly around herself and scuttled with more haste than dignity behind the curtains.

He cleared his throat. ‘If you do not mind staying there for five minutes I will take my bath before this water gets completely cold.’ As he removed his clothes again he reflected that the temperature of the water might be a useful antidote to the sight of Sophie’s body, no curve hidden...

Last night he had reacted instinctively in a way that he had regretted almost immediately. Now he had to make sure that did not happen again.

 

Sophie shivered as she dragged the boy’s clothing over her still damp, uncooperative, limbs. She tried not to listen to the soft sounds of Hal’s clothes falling to the floor, tried not to recollect that glimpse of hard muscle, tried not to imagine his body glistening wetly in the firelight. Her thoughts were abruptly halted by the sound of an oath as Hal lowered himself into the now-cold water.

The atmosphere was still constrained as the two of them descended into the inn’s dining room. It was thronged with market-goers, farmers and other travellers and the landlord found them two seats at the end of the communal board with difficulty. Hal pushed Sophie firmly into the corner, shielding her somewhat from the rest of the company ranged down both sides of the long oak table.

‘Remember you are not at a London dinner party and try and eat like a boy,’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth as heaped platters were put in front of them.

Sophie took a moment to study the youth sitting across the table then reached out, took a hunk of bread from the trencher and waited expectantly while Hal heaped slices of roast meat and steaming vegetables on to her pewter plate. Once she began to eat she realised that she was absolutely starving: there was no need to act as she dug into the food.

The jug of ale in front of them was quite another matter. Sophie took a cautious sip from her tankard, spluttered and nearly spat it out in disgust.

Hal muttered, ‘Drink it, you will soon get used to it and I can hardly order ratafia for you.’

‘I don’t want ratafia, just some water. This is revolting, it’s bitter.’

‘But a lot safer than the water,’ Hal said unsympathetically. ‘Go on, don’t sip at it, just swallow it down.’

Although they had been speaking low, the exchange had caught the attention of a showily-dressed woman opposite. Her lips curved in a smile and, naturally friendly, Sophie smiled back, thinking that she was wearing rather more face paint than was acceptable in polite society.

Obviously encouraged, the woman closed her left eye slowly in a lascivious wink and Sophie realised with a shock that she was being flirted with. She stifled a gasp of laughter just as Hal realised what was going on. ‘Ned! Behave yourself, boy.’ He turned an outwardly charming smile on the flirtatious lady. ‘l do apologise for the manners of my lad, ma’am. He is naive in the ways of the world and has not yet learned discretion.’ It was said with an edge, unmissable by both Sophie and the woman, whose expression showed a mixture of anger at being taken up in that way and a certain frisson at being rebuked by such an attractive man.

The feeling the exchange evoked in Sophie was a shock. It was the first time she had really noticed the effect Hal had on other women. This one, attraction overcoming pique, ran her tongue round her lips and leaned forward to address him. Her gown strained over an ample bosom and the effect was both startling and, Sophie realised, quite deliberate.

With her own more modest curves firmly restrained by her tight waistcoat, she realised she was glowering at the flirtatious diner. If that lace gave way the woman’s charms would be totally on display, doubtless giving pleasure to every man in the room, she thought. She took a swig of the ale without tasting it, resentfully watching Hal who, however much he might disapprove of the lady’s style, was responding quite predictably.

How could anyone pass a platter of bread with so much meaning, she stormed inwardly as Hal offered the woman the trencher, then watched as she delicately nibbled at the crust, dwelling rather too long on it in Sophie’s opinion.

Irritably she kicked Hal under the table, connecting with his booted ankle with a satisfying thump. He looked at her, startled, and she hissed, ‘Stop it, your tongue is positively hanging out.’

Hal’s brows drew together sharply. ‘That is a highly improper remark from a well brought-up young girl,’ he hissed back.

‘Well, I’m not a well brought-up young girl, am I? I’m Ned, aren’t I?’ she retorted, the bread crumbling in her grasp.

‘In that case, Ned, it’s time you were in bed. You are obviously overtired and unable to mind your manners,’ Hal growled. Then he added louder, ‘Off to bed with you, lad, and don’t hang about talking to the grooms on your way.’

Dismissed, Sophie got to her feet and stalked, stiff-legged, out of the dining room. She would have liked to flounce, but servant lads didn’t flounce. She paused in the doorway to look back and saw, to her dismay, that the woman had slipped round and taken her place beside Hal. Already she was leaning in closer, her long beringed fingers caressing the sleeve of his coat.