CHAPTER ONE
North Devon, England
Helena Reynolds crossed the floor of the crowded taproom, her carpetbag clutched in her trembling hands.
The King’s Arms was only a small coaching inn on the North Devon coast road, but it seemed to her as if every man in Christendom had gathered there to have a pint.
She could feel their eyes on her as she navigated carefully through their midst. Some stares were merely curious. Others were openly assessing.
She suppressed a shiver. She was hardly dressed for seduction in her gray striped-silk traveling gown, though she’d certainly made an effort to look presentable. After all, it was not every day that one met one’s future husband.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” the innkeeper called to her from behind the crowded bar.
“Yes. If you please, sir.” Tightening her hands on her carpetbag, she approached the high counter.
A very tall man was leaning against the end of it, nursing his drink.
His lean, muscular frame was shrouded in a dark wool greatcoat, his face partially hidden by his upturned collar and a tall beaver hat tipped low over his brow.
She squeezed into the empty space beside him, her heavy petticoats and crinoline rustling loudly as they pressed against his leg.
She lowered her voice to address the innkeeper directly. “I’m here to see—”
“Blevins!” a man across the room shouted. “Give us another round!”
Before Helena could object, the innkeeper darted off to oblige his customers.
She stared after him in helpless frustration.
She’d been expected at one o’clock precisely.
And now, after the mix-up at the railway station and the delay with the accommodation coach—she cast an anxious glance at the small watch she wore pinned to the front of her bodice—it was already a quarter past two.
“Sir!” she called to the innkeeper. She stood up on the toes of her half boots, trying to catch his eye. “Sir!”
He did not acknowledge her. He was exchanging words with the coachman at the other end of the counter as he filled five tankards with ale. The two of them were laughing together with the ease of old friends.
Helena gave a soft huff of annoyance. She was accustomed to being ignored, but this was the outside of enough. Her whole life hinged on the next few moments.
She looked around for someone who might assist her. Her eyes fell at once on the gentleman at her side. He didn’t appear to be a particularly friendly sort of fellow, but his height was truly commanding and surely he must have a voice to match his size.
“I beg your pardon, sir.” She touched him lightly on the arm with one gloved hand. His muscles tensed beneath her fingers. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but would you mind very much to summon—”
He raised his head from drinking and, very slowly, turned to look at her.
The words died on Helena’s lips.
He was burned. Badly burned.
“Do you require something of me, ma’am?” he asked in an excruciatingly civil undertone.
She stared up at him, her first impression of his appearance revising itself by the second.
The burns, though severe, were limited to the bottom right side of his face, tracing a path from his cheek down to the edge of his collar and beyond it, she was sure.
The rest of his face—a stern face with a strongly chiseled jaw and hawklike aquiline nose—was relatively unmarked.
Not only unmarked, but with his black hair and smoke-gray eyes, actually quite devastatingly handsome.
“Do you require something of me?” he asked again, more sharply this time.
She blinked. “Yes. Do forgive me. Would you mind very much summoning the innkeeper? I cannot seem to—”
“Blevins!” the gentleman bellowed.
The innkeeper broke off his loud conversation and scurried back to their end of the counter. “What’s that, guv?”
“The lady wishes to speak with you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Helena said. But the gentleman had already turned his attention back to his drink, dismissing her without a word.
“Yes, ma’am?” the innkeeper prompted.
Abandoning all thoughts of the handsome—and rather rude—stranger at her side, Helena once again addressed herself to the innkeeper. “I was supposed to meet someone here at one o’clock. A Mr. Boothroyd?” She felt the gentleman next to her stiffen, but she did not regard it. “Is he still here?”
“Another one for Boothroyd, are you?” The innkeeper looked her up and down. “Don’t look much like the others.”
Helena’s face fell. “Oh?” she asked faintly. “Have there been others?”
“Aye. Boothroyd’s with the last one now.”
“The last one?” She couldn’t believe it.
Mr. Boothroyd had given her the impression that she was the only woman with whom Mr. Thornhill was corresponding.
And even if she wasn’t, what sort of man interviewed potential wives for his employer in the same manner one might interview applicants for a position as a maidservant or a cook?
It struck her as being in extraordinarily bad taste.
Was Mr. Thornhill aware of what his steward was doing?
She pushed the thought to the back of her mind. It was far too late for doubts. “As that may be, sir, I’ve come a very long way and I’m certain Mr. Boothroyd will wish to see me.”
In fact, she was not at all certain. She had only ever met Mr. Finchley, the sympathetic young attorney in London.
It was he who had encouraged her to come to Devon.
While the sole interaction she’d had with Mr. Boothroyd and Mr. Thornhill thus far were letters—letters which she currently had safely folded within the contents of her carpetbag.
“Reckon he might at that,” the innkeeper mused.
“Precisely. Now, if you’ll inform Mr. Boothroyd I’ve arrived, I would be very much obliged to you.”
The man beside her finished his ale in one swallow and then slammed the tankard down on the counter. “I’ll take her to Boothroyd.”
Helena watched, wide-eyed, as he stood to his full, towering height. When he glared down at her, she offered him a tentative smile. “I must thank you again, sir. You’ve been very kind.”
He glowered. “This way.” And then, without a backward glance, he strode toward the hall.
Clutching her carpetbag tightly, she trotted after him. Her heart was skittering, her pulse pounding in her ears. She prayed she wouldn’t faint before she’d even submitted to her interview.
The gentleman rapped once on the door to the private parlor. It was opened by a little gray-haired man in spectacles. He peered up at the gentleman, frowned, and then, with furrowed brow, looked past him to stare at Helena herself.
“Mr. Boothroyd?” she queried.
“I am Boothroyd,” he said. “And you, I presume, are Miss Reynolds?”
“Yes, sir. I know I’m dreadfully late for my appointment…
” She saw a woman rising from a chair within the private parlor.
A woman who regarded Helena with an upraised chin, her face conveying what words could not.
“Oh,” Helena whispered. And just like that it seemed the tiny, flickering flame of hope she’d nurtured these last months blinked out. “You’ve already found someone else.”
“As to that, Miss Reynolds—” Mr. Boothroyd broke off with an expression of dismay as the tall gentleman brushed past him to enter the private parlor. He removed his hat and coat and proceeded to take a seat by the raging fire in the hearth.
The woman gaped at him in dismay. “Mr. Boothroyd!” she hissed, hurrying to the older gentleman’s side. “I thought this was a private parlor.”
“So it is, Mrs. Standish.” Mr. Boothroyd consulted his pocket watch. “Or was, until half an hour ago. Never mind it. Our interview is finished in any case. Now, if you would be so good as to…”
Helena didn’t hear the rest of their conversation.
All she could hear was the sound of her own beating heart.
She didn’t know why she remained. She’d have to board the coach and continue to Cornwall.
And then what? Fling herself from the cliffs, she supposed.
There was no other way. Oh, what a fool she’d been to think this would work in the first place!
If only Jenny had never seen that advertisement in the paper.
Then she would have known months ago that there was but one means of escape from this wretched tangle.
She would never have had reason to hope!
Her vision clouded with tears. She turned from the private parlor, mumbling an apology to Mr. Boothroyd as she went.
“Miss Reynolds?” Mr. Boothroyd called. “Have you changed your mind?”
She looked back, confused, only to see that the other lady was gone and that Mr. Boothroyd stood alone in the entryway. From his seat by the fire, the tall gentleman ruffled a newspaper, seeming to be wholly unconcerned with either of them. “No, sir,” she said.
“If you will have a seat.” He gestured to one of the chairs that surrounded a small supper table. On the table was a stack of papers and various writing implements. She watched him rifle through them as she took a seat. “I trust you had a tolerable journey.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“You took the train from London?”
“I did, sir, but only as far as Barnstaple. Mr. Finchley arranged for passage on an accommodation coach to bring me the rest of the way here. It’s one of the reasons I’m late. There was an overturned curricle in the road. The coachman stopped to assist the driver.”
“One of the reasons, you say?”
“Yes, I…I missed the earlier train at the station,” she confessed. “I’d been waiting at the wrong platform and…by the time I realized my error, my train had already gone. I was obliged to change my ticket and take the next one.”
“Have you no maid with you? No traveling companion?”
“No, sir. I traveled alone.” There hadn’t been much choice.
Jenny had to remain in London, to conceal Helena’s absence as long as possible.
Helena had considered hiring someone to accompany her, but there’d been no time and precious little money to spare.
Besides which, she didn’t know who she could trust.