The Black Sheep's Return. Elizabeth Beacon

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      He raised his eyebrows and went on soaking rags in the icy water as if only the slight wind getting up outside had disturbed the peace of the night, other than Atlas’s lusty snores.

      ‘It will seem odd if I address you as “sir” or “you”, will it not?’ she said in this new Perdita’s softer tone and found she liked it better as well.

      ‘You can call me Orlando,’ he said at last, kneeling at her feet again and startling a gasp out of her as he bound the ice-cold wet rags about her flinching foot.

      ‘Oh, so we’re galloping through As You Like It now, are we?’ she ventured when the initial shock had passed and she felt every muscle and bone in her misused foot sigh in relief.

      ‘We are wherever we choose to be,’ he said quizzically, then got to his feet and looked down at her as if he could read her life history in her eyes.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, fervently hoping he couldn’t.

      ‘For giving you the liberty not to be yourself, or doing all I can to relieve the pain?’

      ‘Perhaps for both?’

      ‘You’re very welcome, lady,’ he told her with a courtly bow that seemed as sharply at odds with his humble circumstances as his educated accent.

      ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said with a regal gesture and a wry smile in return.

      ‘Now there’s only the problem of where you can bed down for the night to deal with,’ Rich said, turning away from the temptation of this suddenly enchanting lost lady.

      Left to his own wayward devices, he might linger half the night talking with her if he wasn’t careful. She intrigued him with the odd contrast of dowager queen and lonely hoyden she seemed to switch between as her moods changed, or he got a little too close to the truth of who she might be for her comfort. He’d seen such mischief in her extraordinary amber eyes just now that he knew she was far more complex a person than either role allowed. He wished now that he hadn’t plonked the candle so close to her that he could see the true glory of her unusual eyes when he rose from attending to her foot by its flaring light and felt as if he might fall headlong into them if he wasn’t very careful indeed.

      ‘If you can endure Atlas snoring all night long on the rug next to it, I think you’d best take the box-bed in the corner. My son and daughter will bounce out of their own beds on to mine before the sun is hardly risen tomorrow and I don’t think your ankle would like two wild animals stamping about on it if I lend you mine for the night and sleep here instead.’

      ‘After today it seems almost beyond wonderful to borrow such a cosy bed for the night. I defy any thief or rogue who found this place by an unlucky accident to get to me before he got to them, so I’m very happy that your dog will bear me company,’ his waif said cheerfully and clearly found his simple life an intriguing novelty.

      After a few days his mundane existence would pall on a princess in hiding and he hoped he would be rid of her long before then, before they recklessly explored the daring female under all those rigidly correct manners of hers and complicated this inconvenient business even further.

      ‘I’ll make you a posset to take away the worst of the pain and while it’s brewing I can make up the bed for you,’ he said, in what he hoped was the detached tone of a dutiful host.

      ‘Thank you, Orlando, you’re treating me like royalty,’ she said politely and he told himself it was a good thing the laughing rogue of a few moments ago was back in hiding.

      He preferred her withdrawn and coolly polite, he assured himself. He preferred any youthful and even remotely attractive young woman to stay at a distance nowadays. Indeed, he had felt no more than a soon-dismissed masculine reaction to any other woman since he first laid eyes on his darling Anna. It felt like a betrayal of his own beloved that a feral part of him wanted to know far more about Perdita than the colour of her eyes. After the unmatchable joy of making love to his wife, the rest of her sex had faded into friends, or lusty females to be avoided. He told himself feeling even a hint of hunger for this intriguing female was an insult to Anna’s memory.

      ‘Are you a wise man?’ she asked curiously as he went about the task of adding a pinch of this herb and a dot of that spice with a sweetening of honey to the pot over the fire until he had the right mix to bring her relief from pain, but not leave her drugged and lost in wild dreams.

      ‘Do you think I would be living miles away from my fellow creatures if I had an iota of sense, Perdita?’ he asked unwarily and saw reawakened curiosity light her fine eyes.

      ‘You might, if you had reason enough,’ she said shrewdly.

      He distrusted the speculative glint in her eyes and set about finding what linens he had to spare for the box-bed that a previous owner of the cottage had built so well it was too much trouble to dismantle when they moved in. It had been all that was left, apart from most of the roof, the walls and part of the chimney, when he and Anna had found this place and claimed it for their own, since nobody else wanted it.

      ‘Maybe I don’t like company,’ he let himself mutter loudly enough for her to hear and felt a pang of guilt at the long Seaborne tradition of hospitality he was betraying.

      ‘Next time I run away from a pack of desperate and dangerous rogues, I’ll be sure to bolt in the opposite direction,’ she said with a cool social lightness that set him at a distance and he was contrary enough to dislike it.

      ‘Were they really so desperate?’

      ‘Of course they were—why else would I have run so far and so fast I got completely lost to avoid them?’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he had the grace to admit, ‘you have been through an appalling ordeal and all that matters is that you recover from your hurts and we somehow manage to reunite you with your friends and family as soon as we can. They must be desperately worried about you by now, so I could make sure a letter is delivered to inform them you’re safe and reasonably unharmed, if you would care to write one.’

      She was silent for a long moment and he began to wonder if she had fallen asleep by the fire. He reluctantly turned to look at her in time to see her shake her head regretfully and look a little mournful and sorry for herself for the first time.

      ‘There is no one,’ she said bleakly. ‘It was a hired coach and the relatives I left behind will not miss me. I thank you, sir, but I will not put you to so much trouble on my behalf.’

      ‘You were travelling alone?’ he heard himself ask disapprovingly and wondered when he’d begun to care what rich and overindulged young ladies did to put themselves in danger nowadays.

      ‘I’m of age, why should I not?’ she asked as if a young lady hiring a carriage and travelling without either companion or protector was perfectly normal.

      ‘For the very good reason it turned out to be such a disaster, I should think. You would have done better to travel post and enjoy the protection of an armed guard and the King’s mails.’

      ‘There’s no post road to my destination.’

      ‘Which is?’

      ‘None of your business.’

      ‘Do СКАЧАТЬ