One Unashamed Night. Sophia James

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СКАЧАТЬ Bassingstoke had been a handsome man too, and look where that had got her. Swallowing, she turned back towards the woman and, rummaging in her reticule, pulled out a handkerchief and handed it over.

      ‘Where did the man go to? Why is he not back?’ The older woman’s voice held panic as she took the cloth and blew her nose soundly, the hysteria of fright heightened by a realisation that their lives depended on the one who had just left them to find the missing portal. Already the temperature had dropped further; the air was harder to breath. Lord, Bea thought, what must it be like outside in the snow and the wind and the icy tracks of road with only a slither of light?

      Perhaps he had perished or was in need of a voice to call him back to the coach, lost as he was in the whiteness? Perhaps they sat here as he took his last breath in a noble but futile effort to save them?

      Angry both at her imagination and immobility, she wrapped her cloak around her head so that only her eyes were visible and edged herself out into the weather, meaning to help.

      He stood ten yards away, easing the driver from the base of a hedge, carefully holding his neck so that it was neither jarred nor bent. He wore no gloves and the cloak he had left the carriage with was now wrapped about the injured man, a small blanket of warmth against the bitter cold. Without thick wool upon him his own shirt was transparent, a useless barrier against such icy rain.

      ‘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.

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