A touch, the barest caress, across the top of her breast.
Hm. That was a thought best not lingered upon.
Completely disregarding her state of mind, her belly reminded her that the smell of sausage and fresh baking wafted up from somewhere in the inn.
Pru sat up and rolled over in one motion, her moment of discomfiture swept away by the thought of breakfast. She never allowed distress to come between her and her meals.
Marvelous. A true night’s sleep and now food. She hadn’t felt so good in ages.
Colin gingerly descended the inn stairs. He hadn’t felt so horrible since his wild, youthful drinking days. His eyes burned from weariness, his back ached from having held himself poised at the edge of the bed, and he’d swear that Melody’s pointy little elbows and kicking little feet had left bruises all over him. Furthermore, he’d spent half the night tugging for his share of the covers and the other half with no covers at all, thanks to Evan, who was stronger than he looked.
The little sleep he’d managed had been disturbed by dreams of Chantal, whose hair had become inexplicably red.
The morning sun through the windows was too bright and the clatter of dishes in the dining room was too loud. And Miss Filby seated at the far end of the room with her breakfast before her was too complicated a problem by half.
He couldn’t allow anything more to slow him down. Melody’s future was at stake. He needed to see Chantal now, before Bertie convinced her to wed him, before he lost all track of her whatsoever! He would not allow Melody to go through life as a bastard when it was in his power to make it all right.
And poor Chantal! Guilt tugged at him. She must have been so desperate.
The money stopped coming from the mother.
Chantal had likely worked herself into collapse, trying to support his child! This momentary fixation on Purty Bertie might even be no more than a frantic attempt to gain the resources to get her child back!
No, the distracting Miss Filby and her brother were not his problem, not when his plate was full of them already.
CHAPTER 6
When Mr. Lambert found her, Pru was seated in the dining room, digging into a steaming pile of eggs and buttered toast. Evan had long since wolfed his down, grunting appreciatively in his usual fashion, then bolting from the inn to romp in the stables. Melody had wanted to follow the boy, but Pru had settled her by the fire with her little rag doll and a spoon and told her to feed the baby.
Meanwhile, Pru ate slowly, savoring every delicious bite, knowing that even if she ate until her belly sat in her lap, she wouldn’t want to stop.
She was fed and warm. Heaven.
Only the crisp footsteps of her employer could have brought her from her gluttonous reverie. He appeared before her attired in a crisp green surcoat and perfectly tied cravat. His eyes, however, looked rather more worn. In fact, he looked like absolute hell.
She blinked at him and smiled. “Good mornin’, sir! Did you not sleep well?”
His lips twisted and irritation flashed in his green eyes. “No, Miss Filby, I did not.”
Pru wasn’t quite sure why this was her fault. She looked back down at her eggs rather than give in to the impulse to apologize for nothing.
He cleared his throat harshly. “Miss Filby, I regret to inform you that I will no longer be needing your services on this journey. You are in no condition to travel, so I have paid the innkeeper and his wife to look after you and Evan for a week as you recover.”
Pru gazed up at Mr. Lambert with the delicious eggs turning to stone in her throat. She choked them down. “You’re leaving us.”
Her tone was flat, without emotion. What good would emotion do her? This man had swept her out of Brighton, where she might at least have hoped for some grueling factory work, and the moment she faltered the slightest bit he was eager to desert Evan and her in this remote inn!
His kindness in sheltering and feeding them aside—and why not, when he’d promised as much in the first place!—he was leaving her in far worse straits than he’d found her.
Of course he is. You know the Quality care about no one but themselves.
She shut her eyes for a moment against that insidious voice. I am the Quality.
Except that she wasn’t. Not at the moment. At the moment, she was a poor servant girl with no employer and none in sight for the future.
Damn you, Mr. Lambert.
He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed and apparently the arrogance to resent it, for he scowled thunderously. “I cannot wait for you to recover, Miss Filby. I have most urgent business with Miss Marchant and you are hardly able to care for Melody in your condition.”
Pru couldn’t resist the urge to argue, though she knew it would do no good. “I’m fit. I am. I were only hungry, anyway. What sort of woman are you used to, guv’nor, that be needin’ a week to recover from missing a meal or two?”
He gazed at her severely. “Miss Filby, you know perfectly well that you have missed more than two meals. What were you thinking to neglect yourself so?”
Oh, that was too much. Pru stood abruptly, sending her bench backward with a screech on the bare wood floor. “Neglect meself? What, like one o’ your fine ladies throwin’ her dinner in the dustbin for wantin’ to fit into her gowns?” She glared at Mr. Lambert, refusing to be cowed by his great height and mind-bending good looks. “It’s folks like your fine Miss Marchant that ‘neglect’ themselves—and everyone they owe! It ain’t me!”
It was strange, the way that her ill-bred vowels sounded wrong to Colin’s ears, as if he constantly expected something better to fall from her lips. He shouldn’t judge. It wasn’t her fault she was uneducated and common, after all.
However, she didn’t look common, not at that moment. Something flashed in those eyes, something proud and haughty and indignant.
Then it was gone and Colin decided it was a trick of the light.
He remained silent, staring her down. After a long moment, she looked away and shrugged. “Evan needed it more’n me.”
Evan. Huge gray eyes in a face pinched by hunger, not ill humor. Colin felt a little ill. Good God, he was an idiot not to see it immediately. The two of them were wasting away!
This was definitely more than he’d bargained for. He clenched his jaw and glared at Miss Prudence Filby, walking, talking complication times two.
As if she could tell he wavered, she stepped forward then, lips parted to protest. He held up a hand sharply, furious at himself for being so unobservant that he’d saddled himself with hindrances, not helpers.
Bowing stiffly, he said, “Good-bye, Miss Filby. I wish you and Evan well.”
Left behind in the public room of the inn, Pru stood frozen. What had just happened?
Blinking, she let her knees give out and sat abruptly back down on the bench. Her gaze fixed on her plate of eggs gone cold, the edges already congealing on the white-glazed pottery.
He’d left them. The rotter had just driven off and left them!
What was she to do now?
Pull yourself together. There’s no need to feel so betrayed. Who were you to him, anyway? Just the help, that’s what.
She forced herself to draw a breath. Then another. She brought the tankard of water to her lips and made herself swallow.
You have a brain. Use it!
Yes. Right. Push the ache down. Cover it. Move onward.
Mr. Lambert had left the price of a week’s stay with the innkeeper. If she could cajole part of that out of the man and leave at once, she could get passage on the next coach for her and Evan. She still had the three shillings from yesterday—
Her hand flew to her pocket, only to find nothing within, not even a spare button. Someone had undressed her last evening, someone who had helped themselves to her entire fortune.
A heavy step sounded before her and she raised her gaze to the florid face of the burly innkeeper. By his breath, he’d already started making a dent in his profits for the day. His narrowed gaze bore her no good.
All hope of wheedling a bit of Mr. Lambert’s coin from the man died.
“Get up!” The man sneered. “This table’s for payin’ guests!”
“But—”
Her protest died as the man raised his hand high. She scrambled from the bench, her tankard still in her hand.
She backed up a step. “My employer left you with money for my stay.”
The innkeeper’s lip curled. “Did he now?”
Pru gaped. “You know he did!”
“I know ye owe me for a night and two meals, ye and the boy. I know there’s a dozen tankards need scrubbin’ and then ye can get on them chamber pots!” He leered at her bosom. “Might take months to work it off, unless yer fond o’ workin’ on yer back.”
Pru stood completely still, her blood pounding in her ears, drowning out the man’s foul words. She saw the bleak future. She’d be a slave to the cruel man, paying off a debt that would never die. Evan would grow up underfoot at an inn with no chance to fulfill his birthright.
The throb of her own pulse increased.
She’d been abused by Chantal, deserted by Mr. Lambert, and now this wicked man meant to make her his scullery slave and whore. She’d worked her fingers to the bone serving and serving and serving and all it brought her was more drudgery!
Her hand tightened on her tankard until her knuckles whitened from the strain.
Enough, by God, was enough!
Surprisingly, when Colin swept Melody up from her play with Gordy Ann on the floor and toted her out to the waiting chaise, she made no protest at all at leaving Miss Filby and her son behind. A hundred yards down the road, however, realization struck.
He felt a tugging at his coat.
“Where’s Evan, Uncle Colin? Uncle Colin, we lost Pru! Go back!”
Colin drove on, eyes on the road, jaw tight against the ache caused by her worried cries. It was for the best. He knew from experience that Melody needed her mother, her true mother, not a hired substitute. Especially not one so frail and undependable as Miss Prudence Filby. God, the way she’d looked at him, those stormy eyes flashing with indignation and betrayal and tinted with astonishing but undeniable hurt!
Melody began to wail, wrapping her arms about his bicep and stomping on the seat with both feet. “Go back, go back, go back—”
She was in danger of toppling right over the dashboard and into the road beneath Hector’s hooves. Colin swept her into his lap with one arm, keeping a tight hold on the reins. Her banshee wails were beginning to spook the horse.
He tucked her face into his weskit and spoke softly but firmly. “We must go on and Miss Filby and Evan must stay at the inn, Mellie. Miss Filby is much too ill to ride with us today. Quiet now, Melody. Quiet.”
She wrapped sticky hands up behind his neck, pressing Gordy Ann into his left ear, and wept into his lapel as if her heart were breaking. Her raw cries tore into him, making him ache with guilt. Colin’s chest stayed tight until she finally slithered down his weskit to curl into his lap, her thumb in her mouth and her scrap of a doll held close. Wet lashes drooped and she dozed limply, as if her tears had emptied her entirely.
She’d had one day with Miss Filby and the boy! How could she care so deeply if she rode away from them?
Then again, she’d lost so many people in her short life. Her mother, her nurse, even Aidan and Madeleine and the staff of Brown’s. Of course, she’d see the lot at Brown’s again soon, but Colin didn’t know if Melody truly believed that. How could she, poor wee mousie? No one who’d left her had ever come back.
She must feel like people were water she was trying to catch with open fingers!
And now he’d caused her to gain and lose two more.
He’d been selfish, hiring someone to ease his burden without thinking what the temporary arrangement might do to a tiny child. It was becoming very obvious to him that although he’d known a few children, he knew absolutely nothing about being a father.
Well, he would learn. He was a man of intelligence, after all. He was a knighted scholar, for pity’s sake! If anyone could learn the ropes, so to speak, it would be he.
Cuddling the limp pile of heartbroken mousie on his lap with one arm, he only hoped he could learn fast enough, before he did any permanent damage.
“He left?”
In her bedchamber at her grand family estate, Melody drew back against the cushions of the sofa where they sat before the fire and stared at Button, her jaw dropped in shock. “Did he go back for them?”
Button blinked. “Why, no. As a matter of fact, he never did.”
“He simply left them there?” She flung herself to her feet and began to pace on the carpet before him, twisting her hands together until the whites of her knuckles showed. “Men! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Button! Just when you think you’ve done it, you’ve found the one man who will never fail you—why, he gets up and walks out of the inn, never to be heard from again!”
Button gazed sympathetically at her. “Oh, he does, does he? And who is telling this story, Mellie-my-love?”
Melody slowed her wild pacing and slid her gaze toward him, dismay on her face. “I interrupted you, didn’t I?”
Button lifted a brow. “Ever so slightly, my dear.”
She cleared her throat and lifted her chin, visibly trying to compose herself. “My apologies.” She sat down next to him, a study in poise and self-control. “Please continue.”
Button tilted his head and smiled at her fondly. “I will if you’ll kindly remember who we are telling a story about? Prudence was capable of taking care of herself in any situation, I should think.” He opened his arm. “Come and snuggle close, pet, and hear what happened next.”
Melody relaxed into his embrace once more. “Poor Prudence,” she said, sighing.
Button grunted. “Poor Sir Colin, you mean . . .”
CHAPTER 7
Colin needn’t have worried that Melody would cry all the way to Basingstoke. She was never one to allow sadness to interrupt her habitual joie de vivre for long. And when Melody was enjoying life, there was usually hell to pay.
This, she most assuredly did not get from him.
“Look at me, Uncle Colin!”
Melody hung upside down by her little monkey fists from the overhanging edge of the seat, her little booted feet kicking the air in mingled fear and excitement. As he had done several times in the past days, Colin shifted the reins into one hand, made a long arm, swept her to safety, and deposited her right side up onto her seat without another word. Melody chortled with glee.
“Look at me, Uncle Colin!”
She lay on her belly on the upwardly sloped splash guard at his feet with her upper body out in space between the dangerously whirring wheels, reaching both arms out as if to fly. As Colin pulled back on the reins to slow Hector to a safer speed, he planted a foot on her bottom to keep her from slithering all the way out. Melody found this hilarious, of course.
Five minutes of blessed peace followed. Colin began to think about what he might find at his journey’s end . . . and who.
Chantal.
“Look at me, Uncle—”
He looked. She was nowhere to be seen. Not on the seat, not on the floor, not dangling from the retractable roof. “Melody?” In terror, he stood to force the horse to a halt by brute strength. Hector, beautifully trained as he was, did his very best to stop in his tracks.
Unfortunately, carriages were not meant to stop in their tracks, not even lightweight racing gigs. When the weight of the forward-moving vehicle hit the wooden spar that held the harness shafts in place, the spar snapped with a dry, splintering shot that made the already alarmed horse jolt sideways in fear. Leather harness straps, twisted out of their purpose by the broken spar, gave way under the force of a large healthy animal moving in the wrong direction.
“Melody!”
The carriage jerked to a hard, forceful stop at last.
“Eeeeeee!”
Melody plopped into Co
lin’s outstretched arms. He dropped the reins and caught her tightly to his chest.
“I flied.”
Colin looked behind him to realize that Melody must have somehow climbed into the small “tiger” seat at the back of the curricle. At the impact, she had flown forward. What if he hadn’t caught her? What if she’d fallen beneath the hooves of the anxious Hector? The thought of what might have happened to her made his gut twist. He closed his eyes and held her even more tightly, grappling with his patience. Inhale. Exhale. He blew out a long breath.
“Stop, Mellie. Please, just stop.”
She blinked up at him with her wide, blue, innocent eyes. “You already stoppeded, Uncle Colin.”
He sat down on his seat with her safely in his lap and surveyed the damage. The harness was a ruin. Hector was hopelessly tangled and stood there with white-edged eyes and twitching skin. Even if Colin could somehow harness him with the remains of the leather straps, the curricle itself was too damaged for him to pull.
Melody craned her neck to survey the tangle. “You mucked it, Uncle Colin.”
Colin sighed, too weary to correct her vulgarity. “Indeed.”
She thrust her rag doll into his view, inches from his nose. “Gordy Ann says ‘Cor Blimey!’, Uncle Colin.”
“Ah.” Gordy Ann’s “head” flopped to one side. She indeed looked dismayed. Or dead. Colin closed his eyes momentarily. “Of course she does.”
Having dispensed commentary to her satisfaction, Melody tucked Gordy Ann into her armpit and wiggled to a more comfortable position in his lap. “Can we go back to Brown’s now, Uncle Colin?”
Brown’s. Hell. When Melody recalled all this havoc to Aidan and Madeleine—and she would, he was sure, with great excitement—then he, Colin, was going to have to find a very deep hole to hide in.
“Er, mousie?” He couldn’t ask her to lie, of course. That would be unthinkable. However, he was rather desperately not above bribing her to keep quiet.
“It sinkeded,” Melody said thoughtfully, considering the forward-tipped gig.
“What, mousie?”
Rogue in My Arms: The Runaway Brides Page 6