She felt calmer for the explosion, although she doubted it had helped her looks. After she’d worked so hard to appear the proper countess this morning.
The thought nearly made her burst into fresh torrents, but she forced herself to desist and lay still while he undressed her. Which he did, right down to her shift, before drawing back the covers and tucking her underneath. He examined her as he did so, cursing when he saw the bruise darkening on her thigh. “I should kill him for that alone.” He took her hands in his, and waited until she lifted her head to meet his eyes. “Now tell me the truth. All of it. Don’t keep anything back. We’re partners, remember?”
“W-what did you hear?”
His mouth hardened. “That somehow the man knows that we aren’t married. Talk to me, Faith.” He pressed her fingers, his eyes willing her to tell him everything.
She had to. He’d seen it for himself. “They—they won’t leave me alone, now they’ve found me.” Her world had come crashing down around her with the reappearance of the man who had terrified her for so long. The ruffian she’d successfully eluded for two years. Or maybe she hadn’t been worth his while seeking out before now. “Let me leave, John. I’ll go and you’ll never hear from me again.”
He leaned forward, took her chin in his hand. “No, my sweet, we’re in this together. We will not give in to this evil bastard.” He sat so close to her that she could see the stubble shading his chin despite his shave that morning. “No running away.” He studied her with a gaze altogether too perceptive for her liking. “Or should I say no running away again?”
She flinched back but he maintained his touch on her chin, although he didn’t grip her hard enough to bruise. “Yes.” She swept her tongue across her lips and his eyes darkened, almost imperceptibly. Because they remained so close, she saw everything.
As he would in her. “You’re right. That’s why I ran.”
“Talk to me.” He released her, but didn’t move back.
“They used to be camp followers. The kind who set up gambling dens to amuse the soldiers and then entrap them.”
“Is that what they did?” His words rapped out, harsh and unforgiving.
She swallowed, nodded. “John, that is my husband—“
“Your first husband.”
She was in no mood to contradict him, this husband who was not. He deserved the truth. “Well he spent time in their tent and came out not only a pauper, but in serious debt. Serious for us, anyway. Five hundred pounds.” It sounded trivial now she had such wealth.
“That’s not all, is it?”
She shook her head slightly, kept his gaze although she was finding the task increasingly difficult.
A short respite followed because after a soft knock and his
“Come,” two maids entered the room with tea and fresh toast. How did they know she turned to toast when she wanted a little something in the afternoon? She’d never confessed her small sin to anyone. Either that or muffins, but the muffin-man might not come this far west. Her mind skittered off into the everyday, but she had a problem with that. She didn’t have an everyday any longer, no comfortable routine to follow.
He didn’t speak of the incidents at the Exchange that day until he’d poured her tea himself, dismissed the servants and brought her the cup himself. A delicate china cup with sprays of flowers, the kind she’d have kept for best. Her mother would have loved a set like this. Faith took a grateful sip, then another. Fresh tea was a pleasure she’d never denied herself.
When she’d drunk it, he took the cup from her and put it aside.
“Better?”
She nodded, feeling steadier.
“Then let’s resume.” He sat on the bed once more, almost as close as he’d been before. “Your first husband owed these people a debt. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“You know that five hundred pounds is not a problem for us.
You could pay that with the pin money I intend to give you.”
She loved the “Us,” wished it was real. “Yes, but with the interest—“
“You can forget the interest. If your husband owed a debt of honour, even to a villain, that’s one thing, but I will not pay money gained from extortionate interest rates. Will you leave the matter to me?”
Terror clutched her, but for him, not herself. “He’ll kill you.”
John snorted. “He’s welcome to try.”
Never had he appeared as much a warrior than he did at this moment. What could he see? The truth? It seemed so because his next words showed his perception. “There’s more, isn’t there? Five hundred pounds wouldn’t send you into this state. You’re terrified and I’ve seen your courage in other situations first hand. This is nothing as trivial as money. What did he do?”
He refused to let her go until she’d told him, shown him how impossible it was for her to stay. “John put something else up as a stake. Me.”
Warriors tried not to grow angry because it affected their ability to fight, but John was furious. His eyes glowed with it, his mouth tightened. “Did you do anything? Did they force you to do anything?”
“They had no time.”
“That’s no answer. Try again.”
“It’s the truth. Cockfosters said he would. After they’d come to tell me that John was dead, he arrived and informed me the debt stood and I should ready myself to go with him. He said he had a place for me.” Now she’d started talking, she couldn’t stop. She’d kept this to herself for two years, unable to trust anyone, and it poured out of her. “He said he’d take me to a house in London and I’d work on my back for my keep. I belonged to him, I was his property. He still sees me as such.”
“I’m sure he does. You know there’s no basis in law for any of this, don’t you?”
“I had nobody. If I’d gone back to the vicarage they would not have welcomed me, and if Cockfosters had found out where I was, he’d have punished them, too.” She paused. “Yes, of course I knew.
But I had no money, no means, and nobody to care for me.”
His anger dissipated, replaced by something that looked like—relief? Surely not. “He calls himself Cockfosters, does he? Is that where he lives?”
“I have no idea. It’s the only name I know for him.”
He caught her hands in his, his warmth seeping through her, heating her from the inside out. “So you ran, and took another name?”
She bit her lip, forced back the fresh wellspring of tears. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I used the last of my money to buy a decent mourning outfit and passage to Dover. If the army had brought me, it would have been as Mrs. Smith, but I went to the Admiralty as Mrs. Dalkington-Smythe. I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I could think of no other way around the problem.” Thankfully, he let her talk. “It was an official who gave me the notion. After the battle they were mustering widows, and he called out your name, but nobody came forward, so I thought—what if someone did? Too many people knew me there for me to lay claim, so I packed and left that night, went somewhere nobody knew me.”
“Does your companion?”
“Amelia? No. She’s your relative, not mine. When I arrived in London, the dowager visited me and she suggested Amelia and said I could not live on my own in town. I liked London, the way I could live quietly and people wouldn’t take a great deal of notice of me, so I took her up on her offer. I was merely another war widow. As far as I knew you were dead, and I was taking money from no one. I told myself that, at any rate.”
He squeezed her hands. “Instead, I was very much alive and trying to forget what had happened to me. I must have come as a great shock to you.”