‘Damp beds at the Pelican? I can assure you, ma’am, no such thing has ever occurred!’
‘In that case, please have hot water sent up. At what hour do you wish to dine, Brother?’
‘In an hour,’ Ivo said, conscious of a decided sensation of inner emptiness. That was what he needed: a good dinner, some decent wine and a solid night’s sleep. After that he would be able to cope with anything, including one innocent young lady who apparently had been born with as much sense of self-preservation as a kitten—and just as much inclination to chase whatever caught her eye or her fancy.
* * *
By eight o’clock, with a succulent beefsteak and the best part of a bottle of claret inside him, he made a determined effort to bring Miss Newnham to a better understanding of the realities of life for a well-bred young lady of marriageable age.
‘You cannot go about kissing men in inn yards.’
‘You kissed me,’ she pointed out calmly without a hint of accusation.
‘Only because you wanted me to,’ Ivo protested, feeling any authority he had slithering away beneath his feet.
‘I did not. I merely said... Oh, I expect you are right, I must have appeared to have been asking. I admit I was curious. Do you kiss any woman who asks you?’
‘No.’ He was feeling hunted now. ‘And a gentleman’s life is not strewn with such offers either. Leaving that aside, you cannot be too careful. Reputation is a fragile thing and impossible to restore once blemished.’ He was quite pleased with that pronouncement—it sounded like something the starchiest matron would say.
‘Fiddlesticks.’ Jane waved a well-nibbled chicken leg at him. ‘My friend Verity, the one who married the Duke, was quite ruined because she spent the night on a tiny island with
him—and they were discovered by the current Bishop and his entire entourage. Now she is completely respectable again.’
‘Virtually anything may be forgiven by marriage to a duke,’ Ivo said acidly. ‘Unfortunately, there are none spare to come to your rescue in this case.’
‘Mama was only complaining about that recently,’ Jane said. ‘She has been scouring the Peerage in the hope of finding me one. An heir would do, but she is discovering that is a problem as well. But as I told you, I have no desire to be married to anyone and I will be carrying out my business under my new name, so Jane Newnham can be as ruined as she likes and it will not matter.’
Ivo wondered if it would be completely unmanly to bury his face in his hands and give way to sobs and decided it would be. ‘You would refuse a duke?’
‘Not if I was madly in love with him as Verity is with Will. But it is highly unlikely, don’t you think? To discover an unknown duke on the marriage mart and one with whom I shared a deep love?’
‘Indeed it would be.’ He imagined that Mr and Mrs Newnham, who by now would surely have received a distraught ladies’ maid confessing that she had lost Jane, would settle for any respectable, solvent, gentleman under the age of seventy who could remove their errant daughter to a life of safe domesticity. ‘There are another fifty miles to cover tomorrow. Somehow we are going to have to deliver you to your cousin without her realising that you have travelled from the outskirts of London with a strange gentleman and not even a maid as a chaperon.’
‘That seems simple enough, surely? I can tell the postilion to drop you off at the gates of your grandfather’s estate and then I continue on to Batheaston.’
‘That would take you almost fifteen miles out of your way, diverting off the route and back again, and I cannot like leaving you to finish the journey alone.’ He thought while he waited for her to serve him from a dish of Rhenish cream. ‘I could get down at the entrance to the village, I suppose. I am concerned that you might be seen with a man in the chaise with you.’
‘That would be compromising,’ Jane agreed after a moment. A dab of cream fell from the spoon she held suspended over the dish and the plop made her jump. ‘Yes, I can see your concern. How would you travel to Merton Tower, though?’
‘I can walk. Despite what I said about the cavalry, I am capable of walking the distance on a fine day.’
‘Yes, of course you are.’ She passed him a bowl that appeared to have received an absent-minded double helping of dessert.
Ivo eyed her suspiciously. No reference to his injured shoulder, no arguments? No protests that he was being over-sensitive about guarding her reputation? ‘Have the fairies spirited Jane Newnham away, leaving you in her place?’ he asked.
‘Whatever can you mean?’ she asked with a twinkle that told him she knew exactly what he meant. ‘I am tired, that is all. I do not wish to quarrel, or argue. Could we not make a later start tomorrow? Perhaps order breakfast for nine?’
Ivo was tempted. His bruises ached like the devil, his shoulder throbbed and the thought of a decent night’s sleep on a good mattress was powerfully tempting. ‘I would say, yes, but I fear your papa may be on our heels by now, breathing fire and brimstone. The sooner you are safe with your cousin, the better.’
‘It is not very likely that he will catch up with us,’ Jane said. She put down her spoon, apparently requiring both sets of fingers for calculation. ‘Billing would have spent an hour fussing and haranguing the innocent inn staff, then she would have had to catch the first coach into London that had room for her. Let us suppose that it was three hours after we left her that she found a seat. Then an hour, perhaps more, to get to central London, then she would need to find a hackney carriage to take her to Aunt Hermione’s house. She might, at the earliest, be back there five hours after we left her.
‘She would not find anyone at home except the staff because Mama and Papa and Aunt were going to an exhibition at a gallery in Piccadilly and then visiting Aunt’s elderly godmother in Hampstead where they were expecting to stay for dinner. Which means that by the time they had returned to Hill Street and Billing had told them what had happened and Mama had had the vapours it would be far too late to set out. Especially as they could not be certain where I was going,’ she added, a look of dawning apprehension wiping all amusement from her face. ‘Even Billing could not be foolish, or suspicious enough, to think that we met by arrangement, but I am sure they would all ascribe the worst possible motives to you—kidnap, or seduction or some such dastardly thing.’
‘So, you believe they would expect me to be heading for the Border with you? Or to some den of iniquity?’
‘Papa is probably expecting a ransom note. Oh, dear, I had not thought of it like that, but why would they think that I would pick up a strange gentleman and then continue on to Cousin Violet as though nothing had happened?’
‘I cannot imagine.’ It should have been the first thing he thought about, not how much his wounds hurt, not how bad he felt about his failure to fulfil his promise to Charles, not his own bruised heart or even how to stop this infuriating female careering around the countryside like a loose cannon with a sketchbook. ‘Do you think they will call upon Bow Street?’