Folly's Reward (6 page)

“You are not.”

“You can’t stop me, angel. Besides, what will you do if the horse goes lame again?”

“But why would you want to come?”

“Why not? I have nowhere else to go.”

It wasn’t fair. He was using the appalling circumstance of his shipwreck, if that was what really had happened, and the injury that had resulted in his loss of memory, to engage her sympathy.

She glanced at his face. He quite obviously knew it, and had no qualms about so manipulating her. But he also looked confident, capable, and commanding. And there was a long, dark road to Glasgow ahead. The presence of a man was reassuring. Or it would be if the man weren’t Hal!

“Your predicament isn’t my concern, sir,” Prudence insisted. “I don’t want company, and there’s an end of it.”

Bobby whimpered and turned over. Prudence looked back at him. His small white hand lay exposed to the cold air above the cover.

“Alas, but Bobby does. Would you leave him to frostbite in order to nurse your entirely unfounded mistrust? Miss Drake, pray allow me to drive you to Glasgow, or I shall turn this horse around and take you straight back to Mr. and Mrs. MacEwen. In fact, I’m not sure that I shouldn’t do so anyway.”

“No!” Prudence said. “You cannot, sir! Mr. MacEwen knows why I am gone. He would not try to stop me.”

It seemed a very small lie, considering what she knew of Black Belham.

“Very well,” Hal replied calmly. “Then I will take you south, Miss Drake. I fear that Bobby is getting cold. Will you take care of him, or must I?”

Without remonstrating further, she thrust the reins into Hal’s hands and climbed into the back. It need only be until she reached the coaching inn. Once she and Bobby were on the public stage they would be safe. And until then perhaps it was foolish to travel alone. After all, Lady Dunraven had sent an escort with her to the MacEwens’ house.

But how foolish that move had turned out to be! They should have known that it wouldn’t be safe for long—that a marquess would be able to discover the name of her father’s old friend. Lord Belham had too much to gain from laying hands on his new ward. He would never meekly give up the search.

Prudence gathered Bobby against her breast and wrapped him securely into her own warmth. Within ten minutes she was fast asleep as Hal drove steadily on through the night.

* * *

“I am sorry,” the man with the eye-patch said, “I know nothing of medicines. I am only asking if there have been strangers seen hereabouts. I have lost my lad, and search for news of him.”

It was late in the night, but light still streamed from the window of the bothy. There was a child sick inside, and his father had sent for the doctor.

“Strangers? There’s the lady and the wee lad up at the Manse, sir, as you have just described to me yourself,” the soft Highland voice replied in the perfect, unaccented English that all Highlanders learned in school. The gentle courtesy was natural and had not had to be learned. “They stay at Mr. MacEwen’s place. And there is the new fellow he has taken on to help him.”

“A fellow? What kind of fellow would that be, now?”

“A black-haired lad with a canny enough mouth on him—or so my Elspeth said when she came back from bringing the milk. And with the looks on him like a prince, so she tells me, from a fairy tale—eyes blue as a harebell. A foolish eye it is some women have, sir.”

“Thank you kindly,” the man with the eye-patch said. He began to drop a coin into the Highlander’s palm.

“No need for gold for a little common courtesy to a stranger, sir,” the Highlander said with simple dignity, stepping back. “Good night to you, sir. And I hope you find your lad.”

The man with the eye-patch caught up his horse and swung into the saddle. He rode away toward the Manse with the easy seat of a professional soldier. As the darkness closed about him, he loosened the pistols in his coat pocket.

The Cock and Ninepins in Glasgow was filled with bustle and ablaze with light when Hal drove the cart into the inn yard. The stage had just come in. Fresh horses had already been run out and were being put into the shafts.

He glanced around at the flaring torches and the scurrying grooms. A problem of some import, which had been nagging at him for the last two hours, became charmingly clamorous in its immediacy. He had no money, no credit, and no influence. How the devil was he going to pay for a seat on the coach?

Yet he was damned if he was going to allow Miss Prudence Drake to disappear on her mysterious errand alone. Did she really expect him to believe that she had no serious reason for creeping away from the Manse and fleeing south with a five-year-old boy?

Hal glanced back over his shoulder. The blond head of the child snuggled into Prudence’s plain brown coat. Dear Lord, but she wore damned ugly clothes! He would like to see her in a decent gown. He had a sudden vision of her in sheer ivory silk, her hair dressed with pearls to soften the severe bones of her face.

It came to him with an odd sense of shock that such a thought seemed quite natural, as if he came from a world where ladies often wore ball gowns and no expense need be spared. But he had nothing to offer her and, God save him, as he studied her sleeping face, his real desire was to undress her. At which shameful thought, Hal saw Prudence sigh, open her eyes, and look about.

“Oh, heavens, we’re here. Wake up, Bobby!”

The child clung sleepily to her arm as she attempted to extricate herself.

“Come, young man,” Hal said, lifting the boy effortlessly into his arms. “We are going on a journey.”

He slung Bobby onto his hip and walked into the office of the Cock and Ninepins.

“I need three tickets on the Carlisle coach, sir,” he said to the man behind the desk. “Inside seats, if you please.”

The man looked up with distinct hostility at this cavalier request from a vagabond. “Inside’s all bought up, my lad.”

“Nevertheless, I have a young child here, as you see, and a lady. We shall require inside seats.”

“That is,” Prudence said behind him, “I require two seats inside. The gentleman may make separate arrangements.”

“I am very sorry, ma’am,” the man said. “I have no inside seats at all. You should have purchased them ahead.”

“Then would you have seats on the roof, sir?” Hal asked politely.

His voice carried a great deal of natural authority, but the man looked him up and down—at the reefer jacket, the scuffed trousers—and offered no humble obeisance at all.

“As it is, there’s no room on the roof, either.” Someone called, and he got up and brushed past the little group. “You can stay here with your wife and bairn until tomorrow. There are outside seats available tomorrow.”

Prudence caught the man by the arm. “Pray, sir. Can you not make some accommodation, at least for myself and the child, if this gentleman stays behind? I can pay in gold.”

She began to take out her purse in order to show him, but Hal grasped her hand and forced it back into her pocket.

“For God’s sake, angel! Pray do not flash gold about in the public office!”

She shook herself free and looked pleadingly at the controller of tickets to Carlisle. But the man shook his head and gave her a genuine smile.

“I’m sorry, lass. The flyer is all booked and loading now. Not even the king’s crown would get you a seat this morning. And you should not be taking the bairn away from his father, now, should you? Especially when he wants to come.”

Grinning at his own wit, he walked away.

Prudence collapsed onto a bench as Hal laughed down at her.

“Wife and bairn?” he said. “Now, that has a lovely ring to it. Here, Goodwife, take our wee son for a moment, while I find you a way to get to England.”

Hal set Bobby down beside her. Prudence pulled the child onto her lap.

“I don’t think,” she said as severely as she could, “that such a flagrant misunderstanding of our relationship is cause for levity.”

“But I would like it very much if Hal were my new papa,” Bobby said.

Hal bent and took Bobby’s small hand in his. “Alas, Bobby, circumstances do not allow such a thing to be. You do understand, don’t you? But we can always be friends, even if we are far away from each other.”

“Yes,” Bobby replied quietly. “But faraway friends aren’t much good when it’s dark and little boys wake up in the night.”

Prudence hugged the child to her. “You’ll always have me.”

Yet her heart broke as Bobby turned his face into her coat and wrapped his hands tightly around her neck. She was only a governess, hired just months before. She had no real claim on little Lord Dunraven and no right to make such a promise. For all his wildness, Hal might prove kinder in the long run than she.

Hal walked restlessly away for a moment, but then he turned and grinned at her again.

“Do you really have a king’s ransom in gold coin in your purse, angel?”

Pushing aside her worry and disappointment, Prudence nodded. She had no shortage of cash. Lady Dunraven had announced that the public flyer was the fastest, safest way to get from Glasgow to England, if she was discovered at the MacEwens’ house. Unless the pursuit was very hot on her trail, she would then be far from Scotland and in safety before Lord Belham’s minions could begin to catch up.

Now, instead, she was trapped like a pig in a poke at the Cock and Ninepins with this mysterious rogue. Every time she looked at him, her heart beat faster. Should she be afraid of him?

The rogue was still grinning. “Then why don’t I see whether there’s a private chaise for hire, with a driver. Would you want to pay for it, if I can find one? Then the journey to England may be made in style.”

“Mr. Hal,” Prudence said, looking up at him. “I am grateful for your assistance, but my funds are supplied by Bobby’s grandmother. I do not think she would approve if I used them to pay for your expenses to England. I am very sorry, but that’s how it is. I hope you will understand?”

“I understand and you misunderstand. I wouldn’t dream of imposing on your employer’s charity, angel.”

“But I want Hal to come with us,” Bobby said.

Hal stooped down and met Bobby’s eyes. “No, Miss Drake is right, sir. She is in honor bound to use your granny’s blunt for you. I can’t expect to come along unless I can pay my own way. There will be costs at every inn, and for fresh horses, and pay for the driver, and it would not sit very well with my honor, would it, if I did not provide a fair share of funds of my own? No gentleman would ever take such unconscionable advantage of a lady.”

Bobby looked very earnestly into Hal’s eyes, and nodded slowly. “But I would very much like you to come, all the same,” he said quietly.

Hal reached out as if to brush his hand over the boy’s shoulder, but instead he turned and walked away, leaving Prudence to face her confused thoughts. Of course she did not want him to come! But she had hardly expected that he would agree so easily, and now she felt oddly and absurdly bereft.

Nevertheless, it would never do to sit here in the coaching office like a ninny and fret about it, so after a moment she stood up with what she hoped was decision.

Taking Bobby by the hand Prudence led him into the warm parlor, where she ordered hot chocolate and breakfast. When Hal came back, she would at least insist on buying chocolate or coffee for him. Then she would ask him to convey the horse and cart back to Mr. MacEwen. Hal could stay on at the Manse, helping to test the new pistols and thus earning his keep, until he finally remembered who he was.

Perhaps her intense desire for an answer to that question was only the most ignoble curiosity! Meanwhile, her duty lay clear.

With a clatter of hooves and a blast of the horn, the overloaded Carlisle Flyer left the yard. The bustle died away, and the Cock and Ninepins became quiet. Prudence walked back and forth in the almost empty inn parlor, every once in a while peering from the window into the coach yard.

Bobby studied a series of risqué cartoons featuring the Prince Regent that were framed on the wall. He had not yet learned to read script, so he could not decipher the scurrilous captions. Fortunately, the exaggerated drawings of the bulbous prince and his mistress were only amusing to a small child, so it seemed harmless enough.

She watched idly as a man rode into the yard on a tall bay horse. The animal was lathered as if it had been pushed too hard. Had the fellow ridden all night over the rough Highland tracks? Prudence hated inn yards for that very reason. The poor long-suffering horses that one saw there, sometimes exhausted or with sores visible beneath the harness, wrung her heart. It was a fact of everyday life, but Prudence felt she would never get used to it.

Fortunately, this horse did not seem to have been abused. The rider gave the animal a pat as he swung to the ground and strode into the coaching office. But as he passed under the torches, Prudence whirled back from the window as if burned. The man had a long scar across one cheek, and his right eye was covered with an eye-patch.

The pursuit had already caught up.

She hurried over to Bobby. She had no clear idea what to do, but they couldn’t sit here in the public parlor like rabbits in a trap.

“What, already fleeing again?” an amused voice said in her ear. Prudence spun about to look up into Hal’s laughing face. “I have a chaise for you, dear Miss Drake. It awaits in the street, and the driver is hired. The owner would like his payment, then you may be on your way.”

Now that she knew for sure that Hal wasn’t coming, Prudence felt the most inappropriate dread and regret. Yet he was a complete stranger and a mystery. It was essential to leave him, not least because he had such a knack for disturbing her equilibrium. Nevertheless, the production of the chaise seemed like a miracle.

“Oh, gracious! This earns my undying gratitude, sir, truly. Thank you. Come on Bobby, Hal has found us a coach.”

They hurried out to the front of the inn, where a light chaise and pair stood at the curb. A rotund gentleman with white side-whiskers beamed at her.

“That’s six guineas for the coach and three shillings for the driver, ma’am,” he said.