Название: Seduction in Regency Society: One Unashamed Night
Автор: Sophia James
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
isbn: 9781472096975
isbn:
‘Can I help you?’ she shouted, her voice taken by the wind and his eyes caught hers as he turned, squinting against the hail.
‘Go back. You will freeze out here.’ She saw the strength in him as he hoisted the driver in his arms and came towards her. Scrambling for shelter, she turned to assist him once she was back in the relative warmth of the coach.
‘There is no room in here,’ the old lady grumbled as she refused to shift over even a little and Beatrice swept the reticule from her own seat and crouched, her breath forming white clouds in the darkness as she replied.
‘Put him here, sir. He can lie here.’
The tall man placed the other gently on the seat, though he made no effort to come in himself.
‘Look after him,’ he shouted and again was gone, the two other occupants silent in his wake.
One man dead, one man injured, one older woman hysterical and one younger man useless. Bea’s catalogue of their situation failed to include either her injuries or that of the tall stranger, but when he had stood by the door she had noticed blood near his eye, trickling across his face and the front of his white, white shirt in a steady stream of red.
He used his hands a lot, she thought, something that was unusual in a man. He had used them to slide down the cheek of the dead gentleman opposite and across the arms and legs of the driver who lay beside her, checking the angle of bones and the absence of breath and the warmth or coldness of skin.
When she had felt his fingers on the pulse at her neck as she had awakened after the accident, warmth had instantly bloomed. She wished he might have ventured lower, the tight want in her so foreign it had made her dizzy…
Shock consumed such daydreams. She was a twenty-eight-year-old widow who had no possible need or want for any man again. Ever. Twelve years of hell had cured her of that.
The movements of the older lady and her son brought her back to the present as they tried to unwrap the driver from the cocoon of the borrowed cape and take it for their own use. Laying her hands across the material, Bea pressed down.
‘I do not think that the gentleman who gave him this cloak would appreciate your taking it.’
‘He is only the driver…’ the man began, as if social status should dictate the order of death, but he did not continue as the one from outside appeared yet again.
‘M…m…ove b…b…ack.’
His voice shook with the coldness of a good quarter of an hour out in the elements with very little on and in his hands he held the door.
Hoisting himself in, he wedged the door between the broken edges, some air still seeping through the gaping jagged holes, but infinitely better than what had been there a second earlier.
Beads of water ran down his face and his shirt was soaked to the skin, sticking against his body so that the outline of muscle and sinew was plainly evident. A body used to work and sport. Taking a cloth from her bag, Bea caught his arm and handed it to him, the gloom of the carriage picking up the white in his teeth as he smiled, their fingers touching with a shock of old knowledge.
Her world of books came closer: Chariclea and Theagenes, Daphnis and Chloe—just a few of the lovers from centuries past who had delighted her with their tales of passion.
But never for her.
The plainness of her visage would not attract a man like this one, a man who even now turned to the driver, finding his hand and measuring the beat of his heart against the count of numbers.
‘You have done this before?’ She was pleased her voice sounded so level-headed. So sensible.
‘Many times,’ he returned, swiping at hair that fell in dripping waves around his face. Long, much longer than most men kept theirs. There was arrogance in his smile, the look of a man who knew how attractive he was to women. All women. And certainly to one well past her prime.
Looking away, she hated the hammer beat of her heart. ‘Will anyone come, do you think?’
Another question. This time aimed at the carriage in general.
‘No one.’ The younger man was quick in his reply. ‘They will not come until the morning and by then Mama will be…’
‘Dead…dead and frozen.’ His mother finished the sentiment off, her pointless rant an extension of the son’s understanding of their predicament.
‘If we sit close and conserve our energy, we can wait it out for a few hours.’ The stranger’s voice held a strand of impatience, the first thread of anything other than the practicality that she had heard.
‘And after that…?’ The younger man’s voice shook.
‘If no one comes by midnight, I will take a horse and ride towards Brentwood.’
Bea stopped him. ‘But it is at least an hour away and in this weather…’ She left the rest unsaid.
‘Then we must hope for travellers on the road,’ he returned and brought out a silver flask from his pocket, the metal in it glinting in what little light there was.
After a good swallow he wiped the top and handed it over to her.
‘For warmth,’ he stated. ‘Give it to the others when you have had some.’ Although she was a woman who seldom touched alcohol, she did as he said, the fire-hot draught of the liquor chasing away the cold. The older woman and younger man, however, did not wish for any. Not knowing quite what to do now, she tried to hand it back to the man squeezed in beside her.
When he neither reached for it nor shook his head, she left it on her lap, the cap screwed back on with as much force as she could manage so that not a drop would be wasted. He had much on his mind, which explained his indifference, she decided, the flask and its whereabouts the least of all his worries.
Finding her own bag wedged under the seat, she brought out the Christmas cake that she had procured before leaving Brampton. Three days ago? She could barely believe it was only that long. Unfolding the paper around the delicacy, she looked up.
‘Would everyone like a piece?’
The two opposite reached out and she laid a generous portion in their hands, but the tall man did nothing, merely tilting his head as though listening for something. Beatrice tried to imagine what it was that had caught his attention as she tucked the cake away. She did not take any either, reasoning perhaps he wished for her to ration the food just in case the snowstorm kept up and nobody came.
Nobody. The very word cast her mind in other directions. There would be nobody to meet her or to miss her if she failed to arrive in London. Not this week or the next one.
Perhaps the head gardener whom she had befriended in the past few weeks might one day wonder why she had never come to visit as she had promised she would, but that would be the very most of it. She could СКАЧАТЬ