Rannulf returned to the inn forty minutes after leaving it, having arranged for the hire of a tolerably smart carriage and two horses at an exorbitant price. They were to be ready for him within the hour. There would be time for breakfast first. He was ravenously hungry again. He hoped Claire was not still in bed—he was also feeling lusty and she had looked very inviting when he left their room.
He took the stairs two at a time and threw the door wide. The bed was empty. She was not behind the screen. He opened the door to the private dining room. She was not there either. Dash it all, she had not waited for him but had gone down to breakfast already. But when he got to the top of the staircase he stopped suddenly, frowned, and turned back. He stepped inside their bedchamber and looked around.
Nothing. No clothes, no hairpins, no reticule. No portmanteau. His hands curled into fists at his sides and he felt the beginnings of anger. He could not pretend to misunderstand. She had slipped away and left him. Without a word. She had not even had the backbone to tell him that she was going.
He went back downstairs and came face to face with both the innkeeper and his wife, the one staring at him with apparent sympathy, the other with compressed lips and angry glare.
“I suppose,” Rannulf said, “she has gone on the stagecoach.”
“Skittish,” the landlord said. “A new wife, see. Some of them are like that, until they are properly broken in.”
“Wives are not horses,” his wife said severely. “I suppose you quarreled, and I suppose you said some nasty things. I just hope you did not hit her.” Her eyes narrowed.
“I did not strike her,” Rannulf said, hardly believing that he would stoop to defend himself to servants.
“Then you had better ride after the coach and eat some humble pie,” she advised. “Don’t you scold her, mind. You tell her you are sorry and you will speak gentle to her for the rest of your natural-born life.”
“I will do that,” he said, feeling remarkably foolish—and furiously angry deep down. She had not had the decency ...
“She left a note for you,” the landlord said, tossing his head in the direction of the counter.
Rannulf turned his head to see a folded piece of paper lying there on the bare wood. He strode across the taproom, picked it up, and unfolded the paper.
“I cannot go with you,” the note read. “I am sorry I do not have the courage to say so in person. There is someone else, you see. Respectfully yours, Claire.” She had underlined the one word three times.
So he had been bedding and making merry with someone else’s mistress, had he? He nodded his head a couple of times, a mocking smile playing about his lips. He supposed it had been naive of him to believe that a woman of her looks and profession was without the protection of some wealthy man. He crumpled the note in one hand and stuffed it into a pocket of his coat.
“You will be wanting your horse, sir,” the innkeeper informed him. “To go after her.”
Dammit all, he wanted his breakfast .
“Yes,” he said. “I will.”
“It is all ready,” the man informed him. “I took the liberty after your good lady left of—”
“Yes, yes,” Rannulf said. “Give me your bill and I will be on my way.”
“And her a new bride just two nights ago,” the landlord’s wife said. “I changed the bedding, sir, as you may have noticed. You did not want to be laying on bloody sheets last night, did you, now?”
Rannulf was facing the counter, opening his purse, his back to her. For a moment he froze.
Bloody sheets?
“Yes, I did notice,” he said, pulling out the required sum plus a generous vail. “Thank you.”
He recited every obscenity, every profanity he could think of as he rode away from the inn a few minutes later, supposedly in pursuit of his skittish, high-strung wife.
“Bugger it,” he said aloud at last. “She was a damned virgin .”
When Judith was set down in the village of Kennon in Leicestershire during the afternoon, it was to the unsurprising discovery that no gig or cart or servant from Harewood Grange was awaiting her. The house was three miles away, she was informed, and no, there was no safe place to leave her portmanteau. She must take it with her.
Tired, hungry, and heartsick, Judith trudged the three miles, taking frequent stops to set her portmanteau down and switch hands. She had brought very little with her— there was not a great deal to bring—but it was amazing how heavy a few dresses and shoes and nightgowns and brushes could be. The sun beat down on her from a cloudless sky. Soon thirst became even more pressing than hunger.
The driveway up to the house seemed interminably long, winding as it did beneath dark overhanging trees, which at least provided some welcome shade. The house itself, she could see when it finally came into sight, was something of a mansion, but then she had expected it to be. Uncle Effingham was enormously wealthy. It was why Aunt Effingham had married him—or so Mama had once said when cross over a letter she had perceived as condescending.
A servant answered Judith’s knock at the front door, looked at her down the length of his nose as if she were a slug the rain had brought out, showed her into a salon leading off the high, marbled hall, and shut the door. She waited there for well over an hour, but no one came or even brought her any refreshments.
She desperately wished to open the door and ask for a glass of water, but she was foolishly awed by the size of the house and the signs of wealth all around her.
Finally Aunt Effingham came, tall and thin, with improbable black curls framing the underside of the brim of her bonnet. She looked very little different than she had eight years ago, when Judith had last seen her.
“Ah, it is you, is it, Judith?” she said, approaching close enough to kiss the air next to her niece’s cheek.
“You have certainly taken your time. I was hoping for Hilary since she is the youngest of you and would probably be the most biddable. But you will have to do instead. How is my brother?”
“He is well, thank you, Aunt Louisa,” Judith said. “Mama sends her—”
“Gracious heaven, child, your hair!” her aunt exclaimed suddenly. “It is quite as gaudy as I remember it being. What a dreadful affliction and what a trial for my brother, who has always been the soul of propriety and respectability. What was your mama thinking of to buy you that bonnet when it merely draws attention to your hair? I will have to find you another. Did you bring caps to wear indoors? I shall find you some.”
“I do have—” Judith began, but her aunt’s gaze had moved below the offending bonnet and hair to her niece’s cloak, which had been opened back for some coolness. Her eyebrows snapped into a horrified frown.
“What,” she exclaimed, “was my sister-in-law thinking of to send you to me dressed like that?”
Beneath her cloak Judith was wearing her plain muslin dress with its modest neckline and fashionably high waist. She glanced down at herself in some unease.
“That dress,” her aunt said in thunderous tones, “is indecent. You look like a trollop.”
Judith could feel herself flushing. For two nights and the day in between she had been made to feel both beautiful and desirable, but her aunt’s words brought her crashing back to reality. She was ugly—embarrassingly ugly, as Papa had always made clear to her though he had never used words quite as cruel as Aunt Effingham’s. But perhaps she really did look like a trollop. Perhaps that was why Ralph Bedard had found her desirable. It was an excruciatingly painful thought.