“Are we finished with each other?” he asked her. “Or will we be after one more night together? Will you be glad to be free again and on your way alone tomorrow?”
The head shaking continued, he was relieved to see.
“I want more of you, Claire,” he said. “More of your body, more of you. I want to see you act. I will not stay forever, only for a week or so until we are both satisfied. You are an independent woman who does not like to be tied to one man—I can see that. I am a man who enjoys brief affairs and then is content to move on. But tomorrow is too soon. Besides, you really cannot be looking forward to climbing into a stagecoach again and taking your place beside another bony holy man.”
Her head was still. For a moment she half smiled.
“Tell me you want more of me,” he said, moving his mouth closer to hers.
“I want more of you.”
“Then it is settled.” He kissed her swiftly. “We will leave here together tomorrow. I will come to York and see you act. We will spend a few more days in each other’s company, perhaps a week. Maybe longer. As long as it takes.”
She half smiled again and touched her fingertips to his cheek.
“That would be very lovely,” she said.
He set his hand over hers and kissed her palm. Who would have thought yesterday morning when he left Aidan’s, bound for Grandmaison, that he was riding straight into the arms of a new mistress and a hot affair? He had cursed the mud and the threatening rain, but both had turned into blessings.
“Ready for bed?” he asked.
She nodded.
He was feeling rather weary. Four times last night and twice this afternoon had taken some toll on his stamina and doubtless on hers too. But now tonight need not be as frantic as he had expected. They need not stay awake all night, taking full advantage of every moment. They had days and nights ahead of them, as many as they needed.
“Come, then.” He took her hand again and led her in the direction of the bedchamber. “We’ll enjoy long, slow love-making and then sleep, shall we?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice low and husky and curling about him with a warm, sensual promise.
It was already light outside though it was probably still very early. The stagecoach was to leave from the posting inn at half past eight, the landlord had reported last evening, though he had assumed that Mr. and Mrs. Bedard would not be traveling on it.
They would not. But Judith Law would if she possibly could.
She could not go with Ralph. Where would they go?
The adventure was over. Her stolen dream was flat and empty. Dull pain settled like a heavy hand on her chest. Soon she must wake him and suggest without seeming too urgent about it that he go out to hire a private carriage. She did not have the courage to tell him the truth or even another lie. She was too much of a coward to tell him no, that she would not go with him, that she would continue her journey alone and by stage instead.
Telling him the truth would be the honorable thing to do and perhaps the kinder.
But she could not bear to say good-bye to him.
He had slept deeply all night long after they had finished making slow, almost languorous love. She had lain beside him all night, staring upward, occasionally closing her eyes but not sleeping, watching the window for signs of daylight, willing the night to last forever to prolong her agony.
It was hard to believe that just two mornings ago she had been the Judith Law she had known all her life.
Now she no longer knew who Judith Law was.
“Awake already?” he asked from beside her, and she turned her head to smile at him. To drink in the sight of him, to store memories. “Did you sleep well?”
“Mmm,” she said.
“Me too.” He stretched. “I slept like the proverbial log. You certainly know how to wear a man out, Claire Campbell. In the best possible way, of course.”
“Will we make an early start?” she asked him.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and crossed to the window.
“Not a cloud in the sky,” he reported after pulling back the curtains. “And hardly a puddle left in the yard down there. There is no reason to delay. Perhaps I should go out in search of a carriage as soon as I have dressed and shaved. We can breakfast afterward, before we leave.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” she said.
He disappeared behind the screen and she could hear him pouring water from the pitcher into the bowl.
She willed him to hurry. She willed time to stand still.
“Have you ever had sex in a carriage, Claire?” he asked. She could hear laughter in his voice.
“I certainly have not.” Just two days ago the question would have shocked her beyond words.
“Ah,” he said, “then I can promise you a new experience today.”
A few minutes later he appeared again, fully dressed in shirt, waistcoat, and coat with buff riding breeches and top boots, his damp hair brushed back from his freshly shaven face. He strode over to her side of the bed, bent over her, and kissed her swiftly.
“With your hair all over the pillow like that and your shoulders bare,” he said, “you are enough to tempt even the most ascetic of saints—of which number I am not one. However, business first and pleasure after. A carriage makes a very... interesting bed, Claire.” He straightened up, grinned at her, turned, and was gone.
Just like that.
Gone.
The silence he left behind him was deafening.
For a moment Judith was so devastated that she could not move. Then she sprang into action, jumping out of bed, darting behind the screen, dragging her clothes with her. Less than fifteen minutes later she was descending the stairs, carrying her reticule in one hand, her heavy portmanteau in the other.
The innkeeper, who was washing off a table in the taproom, straightened up and looked at her, his eyes focusing on her portmanteau.
“I need to catch the stagecoach,” she said.
“Do you?” he asked.
And then his wife came through a doorway to Judith’s left.
“What has happened, ducks?” she asked. “Been rough with you, has he? Spoken harsh words, has he?
Never you mind about them. Men always speak without thinking. You got to learn to wheedle your way back into his good graces. You can do it like nothing. I seen the way he looks at you. Fair worships you, he does.”
Judith pulled her lips into a smile. “I have to leave,” she said. But she had a sudden thought. “Do you have paper, pen, and ink I can use?”
Both of them stared at her in silence for a few moments, and then the innkeeper bustled behind the counter and produced all three.
She was wasting precious minutes, Judith thought, her stomach muscles knotting in panic. He might return at any moment, and then she would have to speak the words to him. She could not bear to do that. She could not. She scribbled hurriedly, paused a moment, and then bent her head to add one more sentence. She signed her name—Claire— hurriedly, blotted the sheet, and folded it in four.
“Will you give this to Mr. Bedard when he comes in?” she asked.
“I will that, ma’am,” the innkeeper promised her as she bent to pick up her portmanteau. “Here, I’ll send the lad from the stables with you to carry that.”
“I have no money to pay him,” Judith said, flushing.
The landlady clucked her tongue. “Lord love you,” she said, “we will add it to his bill. I could take a rolling pin to his head, I could, frightening you like this.”
More precious moments were lost while the stable lad was summoned, but finally Judith was hurrying away in the direction of the posting inn, her head—clad in her new bonnet—bent low. She hoped and hoped—oh, please God—she would not run into Ralph on the way.
And yet half an hour later, as the stagecoach—a different one with a different driver and mostly different passengers— pulled out of the inn yard and onto the road north, she pressed her nose to the window and desperately looked about her for a sight of him. She felt sick to her stomach. Yesterday morning’s headache had returned with interest. She was so depressed that she wondered if this was what despair felt like.