A few minutes later, Harry walked in with his valise, which he dropped beside the door, then threw his hat on top of it. His limp was more pronounced.
“It doesn’t look good,” he said. “They’re fetching the blacksmith, but I doubt this can be done in an hour or even three.”
“Oh, dear. I don’t mind arriving a little late, but I don’t really want to wake the household up at midnight!”
“No. It does rather put the cat amongst the pigeons.” Harry eased himself onto the settle, stretching his leg out in front of him. His relief was not lost on Meg. Nor was the faint tightness around his mouth. He was in pain because of her. But she knew better than to mention it. “It seems to be a choice of spending the night here—unchaperoned—or arriving at your sister’s house in the middle of the night.”
Meg had already made up her mind. Sitting for several hours and then tramping at the heads of the horses had clearly made his wounds ache. “We should just stay.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Your reputation, my lady?”
She shrugged. “As well to be hanged as a sheep than a lamb. Besides, no one knows me here.”
“No, but you’ll have another night unaccounted for.”
“Nonsense. I’m with Martha.”
“And if Martha’s servants say otherwise?”
Meg smiled with a touch of cynicism. “If I know my sister, her servants are so devoted that they will say nothing they are not told to.”
“I don’t like it,” he said, dragging his hands through his hair. The gesture pulled back the hair over his left ear, ragged and mutilated.
“Harry!” She dropped onto the settle beside him, reaching out. “Oh, Harry, your poor ear…” Afraid to touch it, she dropped her hand.
Quickly, he flicked the hair back down to hide it. “You should see the other fellow,” he said flippantly.
“Toulouse?”
His brows flew up as if he hadn’t expected her to know where he was wounded. “Sabre cut. I bled like a pig, but it isn’t serious except to my vanity.”
“And your leg?”
“They dug the ball out. It will mend. What are we having for dinner?”
Though the reality of his injuries distressed her, he so clearly didn’t want to talk about them that she allowed the change of subject. However, her quiet word to the innkeeper’s wife caused two cushions to be brought in and placed without fuss on his chair.
He seemed surprised when he saw them, but he merely cast her a wry smile and inclined his head in gratitude.
Chapter Three
The meal was plain but plentiful and, taken with a glass of wine, revived Meg’s flagging spirits. She was pleased the tightness around Harry’s mouth had eased somewhat by the time the innkeeper interrupted them with the news that the wheel would take considerable mending.
“It won’t be ready before morning, sir. And even then, the smith thinks you should replace the whole wheel as soon as possible.”
“I suppose you have no vehicle you could lend us?” Harry asked.
The innkeeper scratched his head. “There’s only the pony and trap we use for market day. Which is tomorrow.”
“Hmm. What if we took that today, and left you the curricle for market day? If it would be fixed by tomorrow?”
Meg intervened. “I doubt a pony and trap would deliver us to Ca—to my sister’s house,” she corrected herself hastily, “in time. Besides, surely the curricle lacks the space to bring much from the market. Could you accommodate us here until morning?”
The innkeeper brightened. “Oh, yes, madam! The best bedchamber will be prepared immediately.”
“Perhaps you have two?” Harry intervened.
“Two?” the innkeeper repeated, bewildered.
“Two bedchambers,” Harry explained patiently. “My wife snores.”
Meg stared at him, speechless, while the innkeeper, clearly trying not to laugh, assured him both bedchambers would be ready by the time they had finished dinner and hastily departed. They could hear him guffawing through the closed door.
“I do not,” Meg said dangerously, “snore.”
“How do you know?” he countered.
She opened her mouth and closed it again. The teasing gleam in his eyes had never used to have quite this effect on her.
“You’re not my wife either,” he pointed out.
“If I were, I would divorce you!”
“Be fair. I should be the one divorcing you for snoring.”
“A divorce would never be granted on such feeble grounds. In any case, my maid, my sister, my fellow ladies of the princess’s household, would all deny it. And you would be reviled for ungentlemanly conduct. What with that and the actresses.”
“Actresses?”
“Of course. It would be found you kept strings of them all over town. The tables would be turned, and then I should divorce you.”
“But I have been on the Peninsula for five years. When could I have seduced one London actress let alone strings of them?”
“I expect you brought them with you from Spain.”
“I suppose I could have,” he acknowledged. “Only then, when did I have time to court and marry you?”
Her lips twitched. “My father palmed me off quickly on the first man who asked. On account of the snoring.”
He laughed and raised his wine glass to her. “I have missed you, Meg Winter.”
She smiled, blushing with unexpected pleasure. “I missed you, too. I wish we had written.”
His gaze was steady, the twinkle of laughter fading as other emotions she couldn’t read flickered there and were lost beneath his concealing eyelids.
“No point in regrets,” he said lightly. “Let’s just enjoy the adventure. Even if Robert’s curricle let us down.”
She sighed. “It’s all such nonsense, isn’t it? We did absolutely nothing wrong, my fellow ladies-in-waiting and I, and yet the consequences affect our whole lives. While the men who were there—several of whom call themselves gentlemen and who were not hiding—will just carry blithely on. Even though at best, they were robbing the princess, and therefore the prince.”
“How did you even come to be there when Her Highness had gone?”
“I received a note summoning me. We all did. Well, apart from Hazel Curwen, who was meant to begin her duty that evening, and no one had written to put her off.”
“Was the summons written by the princess?”
“It wasn’t in her hand, but then she wouldn’t have done it herself. I took it to be written by one of the other ladies. The signature was only a scrawl, but it was on Her Highness’s paper, with her seal.”
“Then someone tricked you?”
“I suspect they did,” Meg admitted. “Though I can’t think why. I expect the newspaper that wrote the piece will sell a lot more copies than usual, but they must know my father will come after them. And Juliet’s father is the Earl of Cosland. But that is another thing, Harry. Someone delivered that newspaper to Winter House even before I got home from Connaught Place, and my parents would never order such a rag. Even Johnny would not. It’s as if someone is trying to hurt me, although I can see no reason why they would.”