‘Excuse me, my lady, but might I ride up with the driver for a while?’ Faith said abruptly. ‘Only it is such a lovely fresh day and I’m feeling a little queasy.’
‘You are? I’m sorry to hear that, Faith. Pull the check string at once.’ She did not look unwell, but she wasn’t someone who ever complained, so Guin took it seriously.
The coach came to a halt and Faith hopped down before Jared had a chance to open the door for her. ‘Thank you, my lady.’
‘Strange, I do hope she isn’t sickening for anything,’ Guin said as the coach started off again.
‘Only an attack of tact, don’t you think?’ Jared glanced across at her. ‘She thinks I will answer your questions more readily if she isn’t here.’
‘Oh. How… I did not mean to pry, I am sorry.’
‘No matter.’ Jared gave a half-shouldered shrug. ‘The Bell was where I met Monsieur Jacques Favel, my swordmaster. I came across him practicing on that thrashing floor eleven years ago.’
‘You were apprenticed to him?’
‘Nothing as formal as that. I had left home. I had, I think, three shillings left in my pocket and I was sleeping in the hayloft over the road at the Angel when I saw him get down from his carriage with his rapier at his side. I guessed what he was and that evening I went across, my own rapier at my hip, spent some of my precious money on a half pint of ale and watched and listened and, eventually he came down, went across the yard as I did last night and I followed.
‘He heard me come in and let me see that he had. He beckoned me onto the floor, challenged me to draw and had me disarmed and at the point of his sword within a minute. He was being generous, I think.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He asked me what I was doing. He had eyes like a hawk and a brain to match. It took him no time at all to work out what I was. My clothes were good, if travel-stained, my accent was educated, I’d had the sort of training in fencing that any gentleman’s son receives but there I was, hiding the fact that I was hungry and tired and terrified, in an inn on the Great North Road.
‘He asked me what I was running from and I told him. He asked what I was running to and I had to confess I had no idea. He made me fence again, pushed me until I was angry and then stopped. Told me that he could see something in me, that although I was angry I only became more controlled, more focused. He could do something with that.’ Again, that one-shouldered shrug. ‘And he did.’
‘Will you tell me what you were running from?’ she asked.
‘No. He was the only person I have ever told.’
‘Had you done something wrong?’ Guin persisted.
‘No. Upon my honour.’ The word seemed to cause him some bitter amusement, to judge by the twist of his lips which Guin did not mistake for a moment for a smile.
Chapter Fifteen
Jared had been on the Great North Road, so had he been heading north from London or south? His accent was that of any educated English gentleman, but just occasionally she thought she caught the faintest hint of a flat northern vowel. And there had been something in his voice when he had said that he was going to Allerton, almost as though he was gritting his teeth and making himself go.
‘Are you from Yorkshire?’ Guin asked abruptly.
‘I do not discuss my past.’ The shutters were down with a ven
geance, the man was looking at her as though she was an opponent at the end of his rapier.
‘You just have,’ she pointed out.
‘I had little choice, I think.’
Oh, so it is all my fault, is it? ‘So you can be intimate with me in a barn one night but not in a carriage the next morning?’
‘You wish to be intimate, my lady? I can certainly oblige you.’ There was heat in his gaze, but no softness in the mouth that had –
‘No, I do not. That was… that was a mistake. I was appreciating your tact in not mentioning it, but I see you were merely saving it up to put me out of countenance when it suited you. I meant that, surely, you can confide in me?’
‘Why? I value my privacy and I refused to confide, as you put it, in your late husband, who remains my employer. Which you are not.’
‘As a friend, I had thought.’ Embarrassment was giving way to an anger that was curiously sustaining. Guin tugged at the check string and the carriage slowed and stopped. ‘Obviously I was mistaken. As I am sure that Faith has recovered from her attack of tactful queasiness perhaps you would like to take her place, Mr Hunt. You may scan the scenery better for familiar landmarks from up there.’
If she had hoped to provoke an answering show of temper in Jared she was disappointed. He opened the carriage door, jumped down, helped Faith from her perch and closed the door on her with perfect civility.