She wanted to believe in him as the eternal hero of mythology.
Chapter XIX
He let one inn go by since she was dozing on his shoulder and he guessed that she needed . sleep at least equally as much as she needed food. He stopped at the next decent inn and insisted that she eat every mouthful of the meal that was set before her even though after the first few bites she told him that she did not think she could eat any more.
It was already late afternoon. They would not make it to London tonight. He thought briefly of hiring a carriage and going as far as Ringwood Manor in Oxfordshire. Aidan had told him fondly in London, while waiting impatiently for all the business of selling his commission to be completed so that he could return to his wife, that Eve had a strong tendency to reach out to all sorts of lame ducks, most of whom ended up in her employment. She would take Judith in even if Aidan pokered up and looked askance at her. She would perhaps be able to offer Judith some of the comfort she needed.
There would be no real comfort, though, until she found her brother, until she was convinced beyond all doubt that he had had no hand in the robbery of their grandmother’s jewelry. And no comfort, he supposed, until the jewels and the thief had been found and she and her brother were totally exonerated.
“We had better go,” she said, setting down her knife and fork on her empty plate. “What time will we reach London? Will Bran be at his lodgings, do you suppose?”
“Judith,” he said, “you are almost dropping with fatigue.”
“I must find him,” she said. “And it must be before he disposes of the jewelry if he has it.”
“We will not get there tonight,” he told her.
She gazed at him blankly.
“And even if we did,” he said, “you would be fit for nothing. You would be dead on your feet. You almost are even now.”
“I keep thinking,” she said, “that I will wake up and find that all this is a bad dream. All of it—Bran’s extravagances, my aunt’s letter inviting one of us to go to live at Harewood, everything that has happened since.”
Including what had happened on her journey? He stared at her silently for a few moments. Could it possibly have been just last night that he had felt a strong bond with her and had been convinced she would gladly accept his marriage offer this morning?
“We had better stay here for the night,” he said. “You can have a good rest and be ready to make an early start in the morning.”
She set both hands over her face briefly and shook her head, but when she looked up at him it was with weary eyes and a look of resignation.
“Why did you come after me?” she asked.
He pursed his lips. “Perhaps after last night’s near disaster with Miss Effingham,” he said, “I was glad of some excuse to avoid further visits to Harewood Grange. Perhaps I was tired of being incarcerated in the country. Perhaps I was not fond of the idea that Horace Effingham would be your only pursuer.”
“Horace is pursuing me?”
“You are safe with me,” he said. “But I would prefer to have you in the same room with me tonight. I repeat—you are safe with me. I will not force myself on you.”
“You never did.” She looked wearily at him. “I am too tired to move from this chair. Perhaps I will just stay here all night.” She smiled wanly.
He got to his feet and went in search of the landlord. He took a room in the name of Mr. and Mrs.
Bedard and went back to the dining room, where Judith was still sitting, her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her hands.
“Come,” he said, setting a hand between her shoulders, feeling the tense muscles there. He picked up her bag with the other hand.
She got to her feet without a word and preceded him from the room and up the stairs to the bedchamber he indicated.
“Hot water is being brought up,” he said. “Do you have everything else you need?”
She nodded.
“Sleep,” he instructed her. “I’ll go back downstairs for the evening so as not to disturb you. I’ll sleep on the floor when I return.”
She looked at the bare boards beneath her feet, as did he.
“There is no need,” she said.
He thought there was probably every need. He had never forced himself on any woman. His sexual appetites, though healthy, had never been unbridled. But there were limits to any man’s control. Even tired and dusty and disheveled she was a feast to the eyes.
“Sleep,” he told her, “and do not worry about anything.”
That was, of course, more easily said than done, he admitted as he left the room and went down to the taproom, positioning himself so that he could see the entrance from the stable yard. Even if they could find her brother and he protested his innocence—as Rannulf fully expected he would—and even if she believed him, there was still the whole problem of proving their innocence to the rest of the world. And even if that was accomplished, the brother was still a spendthrift who was doubtless deeply enough in debt to ruin his family.
Rannulf wondered if he would have been as idle and expensive as he had been if he had not had a personal fortune to finance his bad habits. He was not at all sure of the answer.
Judith washed herself from head to toe with hot water and soap and pulled on the nightgown she had brought with her together with one clean dress and a few essential undergarments. She lay down on the bed, almost dizzy with fatigue, fully expecting that she would be asleep as soon as her head rested on the pillow.
It did not happen.
A thousand thoughts and images, all of them infinitely depressing, whirled around and around in her head. For two hours she tossed and turned on the bed, keeping her eyes determinedly closed to the daylight and her ears closed to the sounds from both outside and indoors of a bustling posting inn. She was almost crying from tiredness and the need to find some momentary oblivion when she finally threw the covers aside and stood up. She pushed her hair back from her face and went to stand at the window, her hands braced on the sill. It was getting dark. If they had continued on their way, they would have been two hours closer to London by now.
Bran, she thought, Bran, where are you ?
Had he taken the jewels? Was he now a thief in addition to everything else? Would she be able somehow to save him? Or was this pursuit simply futile?
But if it was Branwell, why had he put that velvet bag in her drawer? It really made far more sense for Horace to have done it. But how would she ever be able to prove it?
And then she had a cheering thought that had not occurred to her before. If Bran had decided to solve his debt problems by robbing Grandmama, he surely would not have taken all the jewels. He would have taken just enough to cover his expenses. He would have taken a few pieces, hoping they would never be missed or at least that they would not be missed for so long that suspicion would not fall on him. He would not have done something as openly incriminating as running away in the middle of the ball if he had taken everything, surely?
But guilt could have set him to fleeing instead of thinking rationally as a deliberate, coldhearted thief would.
She set her forehead against the window glass and sighed just as the door opened quietly behind her.