Captain Corcoran's Hoyden Bride. Annie Burrows
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Название: Captain Corcoran's Hoyden Bride

Автор: Annie Burrows

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Историческая литература

Серия: Mills & Boon Historical

isbn: 9781408923252

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ out. One of them, a bow-legged, skinny man with eyes that each seemed to work totally independently of the other, came scampering up with an umbrella, which he unfurled with a flourish, and held over her head.

      Far too late, of course, to do her any good, but it was a lovely gesture. She smiled her thanks and the man grinned back, revealing a set of teeth that appeared to have been stuck into his jaws at random.

      ‘I am taking the carriage straight back to Sir Thomas,’ the driver bellowed, shattering the feeling of welcome that had briefly engulfed her.

      ‘Get Miss Peters’s trunk and see her settled!’ he barked at nobody in particular. Yet one of the men ran directly to the boot of the carriage, unstrapped her trunk, hefted it on to his shoulder and trotted with it to the house. Her eyes widened in amazement. It had taken two sweating ostlers to manhandle it into the rear boot of the stage when she had left London, yet he was treating it as though its weight was negligible.

      Mr Jago waved his arm in the direction of the front door. ‘Welcome to your new home,’ he said.

      With the bow-legged man holding the umbrella over her, the support of Mr Jago’s arm, and the way the other two men stood each to one side like a guard of honour as she trod up the three shallow steps to the front door, Aimée almost felt like a queen being escorted into her palace.

      She shook her head at the absurd notion. It was only the latest in a string of strange fancies that had popped into her head today. The certainty that she had been forgotten, when in fact her new employer was going out of his way to help her, the conviction that the piraticallooking coachman he’d sent was a Bow Street Runner, and now, the odd feeling that had not Mr Jago frowned at them so repressively, the oddly liveried staff here would have burst into applause as she alighted from the coach.

      She raised her hand to her brow. Perhaps she was sickening for something after all. Her nerves had been strained almost to breaking point over the last few weeks. And her journey from London had seemed never-ending, because of the persistent feeling that at any minute, somebody was going to point at her, and cry ‘There she is!’ and drag her ignominiously back again.

      And yet, here she was, her muddy boots staining the strip of carpeting that ran down the centre of the highly polished wooden floor of The Lady’s Bower. And the front door was closing behind her.

      Shutting her off from her past.

      Oh, they would keep on looking for her for a while, she had no doubt of that. But nobody, surely, would ever guess she had managed to get herself employment as a governess. Or if they did, by some peculiar quirk of fate, pick up her trail, she was surely not worth following this far north. Not all the way into the wilds of Yorkshire!

      She had done it.

      She had escaped.

      And suddenly, the realisation that, against all the odds, she had reached her chosen hiding place came over her in such a great rush that she began to shake all over. The room shimmered around her, the heat, which had seemed so welcome only seconds before, now stifling her.

      Tugging at the ribbons of her bonnet, she tottered to the staircase, sat down heavily on the bottom tread and bowed her head down over her damp knees.

      She was not going to faint! There was absolutely no need to.

      Not now she was safe.

       Chapter Two

      Somebody, no, two somebodies took her by one elbow each, and hustled her across the hall and into a small parlour. They removed her wet cloak, her undone bonnet sliding from the back of her head in the process. And then they lowered her gently on to an armchair in front of a crackling fire. Again, she leaned forwards, burying her face in her hands to counteract the horrible feeling that she was about to faint.

      ‘Get some hot tea in here!’ she heard Mr Jago bark, swiftly followed by the sound of feet running to do his bidding. ‘And some cake!’ She heard another set of feet pounding from the room.

      Eventually, the lurching, swimmy sensations settled sufficiently for Aimée to feel able to raise her head. Mr. Jago and the wall-eyed man who had held the umbrella over her were watching her with some anxiety.

      ‘I will be fine now,’ she murmured, attempting a smile through lips that still felt strangely numb.

      ‘Yes, you heard her,’ Mr Jago said, starting as though coming to himself. ‘And the sight of your ugly mug is not going to help her get better. Be about your business!’

      ‘Looks like a puff of wind would blow her away,’ she heard the man mutter as he left the room.

      ‘Aye, far too scrawny …’ she heard another man, who had apparently been lurking just outside the door, agreeing.

      And then there was just Mr Jago, assessing her slender frame with those keen blue eyes.

      As if she was not nervous enough, that comment, coupled with Mr Jago’s assessing look, sent a new fear clutching at her belly.

      ‘I am far stronger than I look,’ she declared. ‘Truly, you need have no fear that I am not fit for work!’

      Indeed, she did not know what had come over her. She could only assume that the strain she had been under recently had taken a deeper toll on her health than she had realised.

      She knew she had lost quite a bit of weight. To begin with, she had felt too sickened by what her father had done to feel like eating anything. And then flitting from one cheap lodging house to another, whilst racking her brains for a permanent solution to her dire predicament, had done nothing to counteract her total loss of appetite.

      And the people she’d been obliged to approach, in the end—people nobody in their right mind would trust! She had not been sure they had not double-crossed her until she’d boarded the stage, and it was actually leaving London.

      ‘I am just tired,’ she pleaded with Mr Jago. ‘It was such a long journey …’ And it had begun not the day before, in the coaching yard of the Bull and Mouth, but on the night she’d had to flee from the lodgings she shared with her father. When she had to finally accept she needed to thrust aside any last remnants of obligation she felt towards the man who had sired her.

      For he clearly felt none towards her!

      To her relief, Mr Jago’s expression softened.

      ‘You must rest, then, until you have recovered,’ he said. ‘Do not worry about your position. It is yours. Quite secure.’

      The door opened, and the burly man who had taken her trunk upstairs came in with a large tray, which he slapped down on a little side table at Aimée’s elbow, making the cups rattle in their saucers. Mr Jago shot him a dark look, which the man ignored with an insouciance that immediately raised him in her estimation.

      Once she had drunk two cups of hot sweet tea and consumed a large slice of rich fruitcake, Mr Jago led her up the stairs to a charming little bedroom on the first floor. On the hearthrug, before yet another blazing fire, stood a bath, already filled with steaming, rose-scented water.

      ‘You will feel much better for getting out of those wet clothes and having a warm bath,’ said СКАЧАТЬ