“I used the drainpipe."
“Good Lord!"
Louisa arched her brows. “They are sturdier than you think. And I did not do it in broad daylight, so you needn't look so shocked!"
“But-” Charles felt the questions, which had brewed inside him all day, threaten to burst out. “But why did you do it? Did the general disapprove of this Geoffrey fellow?"
“The general does not want me to marry at all. He says I am too young."
“And are you?"
“Not at all! I am eighteen! So you see how unreasonable he is. He wasn't willing to bring me out this year, and he refuses to let me marry until I've been properly brought out."
“What's wrong with that?"
Louisa raised her eyes impatiently. “Nothing. I daresay you would agree with him."
Charles frowned in confusion. “But what a strange girl you are! Don't you wish to attend balls and assemblies?"
“Of course! I would enjoy them. But one can go to balls and assemblies just as easily after one is married, and there are many things one absolutely cannot do until one is married!"
“Good-” Charles choked on another oath. He could not truly believe that Louisa meant to imply what she seemed to be implying.
She looked at him, her eyes wide with innocence. He decided he must have misunderstood her. All the same, he judged it time to steer the conversation down a different path.
“And this Geoffrey fellow-he proved to be a fortune-hunter, did he?"
Louisa bit her lower lip and peered down at her napkin. “I'm afraid that may have been the case. You will say I was foolish, and rightly so, but I was anxious to be married, and I overlooked too much. I thought he did love me and that I should come to love him, as well. But on the first day out of London, my suspicions were aroused."
She gazed at him again, the blue of her eyes made deeper by dismay.
“Would you credit it, sir? Not once during that day did he even try to kiss me!"
Charles drew up, startled. A grin teased the corners of his mouth, but he suppressed it out of a sense of decorum. “Did it not occur to you, Louisa, that he might be demonstrating his respect for you?"
“Piffle!” said Louisa. “What respect should he show to a girl who had just eloped with him?"
Then, when he looked disapprovingly at her, she gave a little shrug. “Well, to be truthful, I did consider that at first, but it became quite clear to me that he was more interested in the horses our post boys were riding than in me. On the second day I asked him to turn back, but he would not hear of it. He said I was compromised, and we had better go through with it."
“Precisely as he should have thought."
“Yes, but by then, you see, I had come to the dreadful realization that I did not love him and never could. And far, far worse,” she added quietly, “I had decided that I did not want to marry someone I could not love."
A queer feeling rose in Charles's throat. He cleared it, but did not know what to say. Many things came to him: homilies, platitudes, the “I told you so” variety of lecture. He kept them to himself.
“Then it is fortunate you discovered this before you were married,” he said instead.
Louisa sighed. “I suppose so. But I do think passion is a necessary part of marriage. Don't you?"
Charles felt a curious heat stealing up his neck. “Well, I suppose-of course-That is-"
“I am still as determined as ever to marry,” Louisa continued, as if she had not heard him. “But now I have the greatest fear that I shall not manage it any time soon."
“Because the general is likely to turn up rough?"
“No, not that. By now, he's probably thinking good riddance, and will marry me to the first gentleman he can get to accept me.” She shook her head with a wistful look, and her red curls shimmered about her face in the firelight. “I was thinking that it might take rather a long time to fall in love."
Charles coloured. This was not the sort of conversation he should be having with a young lady alone in an inn.
He cleared his throat and put down his napkin.
“Perhaps we should retire so we can get a brisk start in the morning,” he suggested. Then, purposely ignoring the last thing she had said, he offered, “I shall think about your dilemma and see what solution I can come up with to appease your guardians."
Louisa deserved whatever punishment they would choose to mete out, of course. Still, having heard her confession, Charles felt it would be a pity if she were made to suffer excessively. She seemed appropriately contrite, though why she was in such a hurry to marry he could not fathom.
Some foolish notion, no doubt, which he would do better not to examine too closely.
But her contrition, which had so recently moved him to sympathy, vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. She stood when he did and met him with a sunny face.
“Do not concern yourself about the general,” she said, shaking her head. “I am not at all afraid of him-he is quite impressed by rank, you see. That is one reason I approached you, in particular. I heard one of the ostlers pointing you out as a marquess, and I thought that if you took me back to London, he would be more likely to forgive me sooner than if I had lit upon someone else."
Charles pressed his lips into a stern line, but Louisa merely batted her lashes at him.
“I shall bid you good-night,” he said in an offended tone. “If you require anything to make yourself more comfortable, I hope you will avail yourself of it immediately."
“Why, thank you, Charles. That is most gracious of you. But of course I have already mentioned that I shall pay my debts on our return. As a matter of fact,” she continued, “I have made a few purchases from the innkeeper's wife. You will be pleased to know that I have acquired a toothbrush and some powder and a comb. I shall have to see what sort of nightdress she comes up with, but if it is neither too worn nor too outrageous, I just might beg it of her, also."
This catalogue of her comforts did nothing to soothe Charles's temper. He ushered her out the door with a curt good-night. Then he stayed a few minutes longer in the parlour just so they would not be seen ascending the staircase at the same time.
He fumed for a bit, then decided this would only bring back his headache, and he was too grateful to have it gone to risk bringing on another. He stepped over to the fire and looked down at it. But the burning embers only served to remind him of Louisa's hair. Irritably, he thought that he might never enjoy a fire again without recalling his intrusive companion.
Then, with his usual sense of justice, he remembered how miserable he had been all day with his headache, and how helpful Louisa had been in ridding him of it. He doubted whether a night at Lord Northridge's residence would have cured him quite so fast. He would have been obliged to stay up, drinking until all hours and playing cards out of courtesy to his host. Not the sort of quiet he needed after such a gruelling trip, but necessary for politeness’ sake.
Louisa, on the other hand, had exhorted him not to be too polite to her. A strange thing for a lady to say, but most welcome under the circumstances. Charles smiled when he thought that he was far more likely to strangle her before this trip was over. And with reason.
A curious vision suddenly came to him, in which his hands were wrapped about her slender neck. But before he could throttle her, Louisa turned her blue eyes up at him and gave him a mischievous smile, and all at once Charles imagined that he could feel the smoothness of her skin beneath his fingertips.
He found himself wondering what curves were concealed beneath the silk of her spencer. The muslin of her gown had not succeeded in hiding a pleasant roundness to her hips and a slim pair of legs underneath.
A pleasant languor stole over him as he started to conjure more alluring images…