Chapter 23 #2
It had been months, and seemed years, since Merry had been among gentlewomen.
They seemed like creatures from another life; and though it didn’t occur to her to ask them to help her, because the lady facing her reminded Merry of Aunt April, if only in her air of refinement, Merry couldn’t stop herself from smiling wistfully at her.
She had forgotten how she herself must appear—disheveled, oddly dressed, seemingly alone.
The look Merry received back was repelling in the extreme, and Merry dropped her eyes to her plate, aching with hurt, and wondering how low it was possible to sink.
Somewhere in this unfriendly land there was, perhaps, one friend.
Aunt April might be here. If the Guinevere had sailed before it was discovered that Merry had disappeared, Aunt April might have sailed on to England.
In wartime surely it would not have been possible to return promptly to the United States to search for her missing niece however much that might be her wish.
It was another point for the list of ironies that in a sense Devon was right about her.
If there was a way to do it, she was going to escape from him and find Michael Granville.
She had many reasons to be wary of that man, given the lies he had been spreading about her, even factoring out Morgan’s horrifying claim that some action of Granville’s had led to the death of Devon’s sister, but Granville was the only man who would be able to tell Merry where she could find her aunt.
As a knight of the realm, Granville must be relatively easy to locate.
She supposed she was obliged to Devon for giving her the idea.
After weeks of hardtack, toast with fresh-churned butter was a delight, even cold and under these uncongenial circumstances.
She was eating the last bites as the ladies left the parlor to walk their little dog.
Immediately after their departure Devon came in, his unbuttoned greatcoat open over the long line of his leather breeches.
From the energy in his step no one would have been able to guess that he had spent the better part of the last two days in the saddle.
She tried to banish her feeling of utter defeat as he looked straight into her eyes, picked up her cloak from the back of her chair, and held it open.
“Come” was all he said. She didn’t move. “Are you finished?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well? Then, let’s go.” She stood but made no move for the door.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
She could hear the exhaustion in her own voice as she said, “You’ve set too fast a pace. A moment ago I drifted off and almost woke with my nose in a lamb chop. If you could only let me have the afternoon to rest—”
“No.”
“Then only an hour.”
“An hour,” he said, “is not going to do you any good. If we stop for an hour, that’s an extra hour we’ll have to travel after nightfall. The sooner this is over, the better for you.”
Infusing her soggy backbone with some stiffness, she resettled her spine into a more noble posture. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to know where we’re going.”
He took a step forward and settled the cloak around her shoulders, and she conquered an impulse to step away.
“I’ll let you know”—he fastened her cloak—“when I’m in the mood.”
“That’s much too good of you,” she answered with sarcasm that tried hard to be withering. “Would it spoil some international tactical arrangement and plunge the empire into chaos if I could have five minutes to comb my hair?”
“Comb it in the coach” was his laconic answer as he took her arm, propelling her toward the door. She pulled out of his grip.
“Hang it, Devon, I want five minutes to use the convenience.” She felt her cheeks turn crimson.
“Well, for God’s sake, why didn’t you say so? I don’t know your code,” he said.
At his worst the man had an inherent decency that even he couldn’t escape.
When it turned out the outdoor privy was unusable after flooding from the recent heavy rains, Devon rented her a bedchamber and told her with a sudden almost reluctant kindness that if she really thought an hour’s rest would help her, she could have it, but no longer.
Her face must be looking more weary than she realized.
The bedchamber was clean and old-fashioned, smelling faintly of the home-brewed ale used to gloss the fine oak wainscot.
It more than made up for its deficiency of not being on the ground floor by possessing a window that faced toward the back of the inn, with a wide tiled porch directly beneath supported by stout poles that appeared to have been designed with shinnying down them in mind.
And she might have gotten away too if the landlord had been as conscientious about keeping his roof in repair as he was about preserving the finishing on his wainscoting.
And if it hadn’t been his practice to keep his geese flocked in a pen directly beneath.
It was a sorry spectacle of an escape attempt; in fact it ranked as her worst. The flustered geese trumpeted their fury at her and ran about her in circles loosing feathers while she sat winded in the ooze under the new gash in the porch roof, with splinters of lathing and bits of plaster falling on her head and a broken window pot of geraniums between her legs.
The gander spread his ruffled wings ominously and stood before her like Gabriel reprimanding a sinner.
Through a forest of arching scrawny necks Merry saw the people come running; the ostlers, the stableboys, the hired postilion, the kitchen maids, the two ladies with their yipping poodle, the landlord and landlady, and finally Devon, who dragged her out of the mud and feathers and across the fence.
But this was a different Devon from the cold-eyed stranger who had put her in his coach this morning.
This was a smiling, urbane Devon who dripped tact like warm molasses, apologizing to the landlord even as he slipped him a note for the damages.
When it became clear that the landlord’s curiosity as well as his temper was aroused about what purpose a young woman might have in hopping around on his porch roof, Devon’s smile increased in power and became at once rueful and convincing.
The hand he laid on her shoulder seemed a kindly gesture; only Merry felt the threat in the pressure of his strong fingers.
Her jaw clenched with humiliated rage as she listened to Devon tell the titillated mob that she was the runaway youngest daughter of a Frensham barrister (the tone of voice managing to convey neatly that she had been much indulged) and then continue to describe himself as her older cousin, who had barely rescued her from a disastrous elopement with a penniless foot soldier (a gambler and unprincipled wastrel if only she could be brought to see it!).
“Why, of all the unctuous, deceitful—How dare you!” Merry cried, unbearably mortified by the severely critical expressions directed toward her.
Too tired to quite know or care what she was saying, Merry turned pleadingly to the landlady, who had at least shown more concern for Merry’s possible injuries than for the broken porch.
“It’s not true! I beg you to believe me.
This man is a pirate. He’s kidnapped me and held me for months on his pirate ship and refuses to release me in spite of my pleading. ”
She might as well have saved her breath. Truth is so often no more impressive than its herald—and she made a thoroughly unimpressive herald. It was with despair but not surprise that she saw compassionate condescension alight convincingly on Devon’s features.
“Oh, Nan,” he said to her, laughing. “How could you? Very well, then. As you say, I’m a pirate, and I’ve kidnapped you.”
“But you have! He has! He’s telling the truth!”
It was no use. None at all. The landlady began to tut-tut, the kitchen maids to giggle, and the ladies with the poodle to talk about the want of conduct prevalent among young females of this generation.
The landlord clapped Devon heartily on the back and proclaimed him the scourge of the Seven Seas, adding with a sly wink that he supposed the shot was to be paid for in pieces of eight!
There was a good deal more of that kind of badinage, which Devon allowed to continue until, apparently, he felt that he was well revenged.
A mile from the inn he stopped the carriage beside an arched stone bridge above a brook where cows rustled, half-concealed in the rushes. She shrank from him but had no strength to fight when he entered the carriage with a length of rope and bound her wrists.
“I’ll say this for you,” he conceded grimly. “You try.”
Evening came, a smoky mauve lip on a black horizon.
They had stopped often to change horses.
Twice he had brought food to the carriage, and she’d had to eat it with her hands tied.
She’d had to ask him to make a third stop with choked-back pride.
This time the “convenience” was a beech copse where wasps zigzagged among tiny hawkweed flowers, and convenient it was not, because he refused to untie her wrists.
If his acute golden eyes noticed the trail on her cheek left by tears hastily knuckled dry with bound hands when she came back to the carriage, he gave no sign of it.
Mentally retracting everything she’d thought earlier about his basic decency, she was so wretched, she almost had the relief of being able to convince herself she hated him.