The Black Sheep's Return

Chapter Two

Daring to raise her head half an inch from her sheltering arms, Freya ventured a hesitant look in the direction of a vast sigh, as the large hound decided it didn’t understand humans at all and seemed about to go to sleep. She couldn’t actually see much, but it was enough to know the animal was as large as its bark indicated. Wishing she knew more about dogs and her mama hadn’t been so afraid of them that she wouldn’t have the smallest lapdog in the house, Freya wondered how you made friends with an animal the size of a small horse.

She hesitantly held out a still-shaking hand and he sniffed it obligingly before putting his head on his paws and sighing once again as if all the cares of the world lay on his doggy shoulders. Biting back what she assumed would be a hysterical chuckle, she risked pushing herself up on to her knees before the shock of pain in her ankle made her collapse in an inelegant heap and wish she was brave enough to cuddle up to this apparently benign dog for comfort.

‘What have we got here then, Atlas old boy?’ a deep voice rumbled out of the darkness and nearly made Freya jump out of her skin.

‘Who the devil are you?’ she snapped, finally feeling anger burn away the tears and shock of these last horrible hours.

‘I think it’s the host’s prerogative to ask that question,’ he replied with lazy indifference to a lady’s plight and she wondered if that burst of fury had been such a good idea when her safety and possible future might lie in this man’s hands.

‘You can ask, but I’m not promising I’ll answer,’ she muttered, supposedly to herself, but from the deep chuckle it won from him, he had amazing hearing.

‘Let’s start with what you’re doing lying in the middle of my favourite coppice and work it out from there, shall we?’

‘No, I didn’t have the least idea it was yours and you should keep it in better order if you don’t expect strangers to trip over things in the dark and do themselves an injury.’

‘Had I known you were coming, my lady, I would have made sure everything was shipshape and neat. As it is, you’ll have to excuse a working man for being just that.’

She almost leapt at that satirical ‘my lady’ and asked how he knew who she was, but stopped herself just in time when she realised her normal haughty manner had sparked his sarcasm and she should be more conciliatory, under the circumstances.

‘I’m sorry, it’s been a very long day,’ she managed more graciously.

‘Clearly, so let’s get you inside and at least fed and watered, even if comfortable is beyond hope for a lady such as you with my slender means. It’s far too dark to put you on the road to wherever you were going before you got lost now,’ he said gently, as if he could hear the fear and horror in her voice despite her best efforts.

‘I can’t walk,’ she explained blankly.

‘I hesitate to ask how you got so far from civilisation then,’ he teased as if it didn’t really matter how she got here, here she was and he would deal with her as best he could.

‘I fell over,’ she explained earnestly and wondered why it felt so tempting to give up fighting at last and let him take over.

‘Better for you perhaps if you’d done so sooner,’ she thought she heard him mutter, but it was lost in the sensation of his touch, as if he was learning her by feel since he’d failed to bring a lantern with him.

‘Where does it hurt?’ he asked and she marvelled that the authority in his voice had her pointing to her ankle, feeling more foolish than ever when she realised he couldn’t see her in the dark.

‘My ankle,’ she said gruffly and yelped as he found out for himself which one.

Atlas whined his puzzlement that his master was hurting the surprise human he’d found him, then settled at a soothing word.

‘I hope you’re not heavy,’ the man said as he rose to his haunches beside her and it felt as if he was towering over her as he insinuated strong hands under her legs and shoulders and lifted her in his mighty arms.

‘Goodness!’ Freya managed weakly as she found herself airborne. ‘If you’d only let me lean on your shoulder, I’m sure I could manage to walk.’

‘It would take all night,’ he told her and strode along the forest path with her in his arms as easily as if it was clear daylight.

‘It’s unladylike,’ she muttered as she listened for the almost silent pad of Atlas’s feet on the forest floor, surprised to find she already liked the huge animal and wanted his warmth and proximity as she didn’t dare covet that of his master.

‘Probably, but we don’t worry too much about such delicate notions out here in the wilds,’ he told her as if familiar with the dictates of polite society, which seemed unlikely.

Come to think of it, she’d taken him for one of her own kind when he first spoke and perhaps that accounted for this feeling she could finally relax and let a gentleman take care of her. It had been a very trying day, she assured herself, and she was probably wishing the world was how she wanted it to be. If she got through the night in one piece, no doubt it would lurch back to its proper order by morning. For now it felt oddly pleasant to be borne along in a strong man’s arms. She could feel powerful muscles and sinews few gentlemen of her acquaintance could boast as she settled against his broad shoulder with a contented sigh.

‘There,’ he said at last, as he rounded what seemed a deliberately serpentine last twist in the path and the faint glow of a small curtained window made her open her eyes wider. ‘As well it was no further, perhaps, or you would have been fast asleep,’ he whispered as he shifted her to open his door.

‘What a cosy room,’ she managed sincerely as she took in the still-glowing fire and companionable-looking chairs on either side of the fire.

Clearly his wife had gone to bed and that was why he was murmuring, for fear of waking her after a long day of hard work. She admired his consideration and let herself envy his lady for a moment, surprised how appealing the notion of being cared for by a very masculine husband at the end of a tiring day seemed to someone who’d never done a hard day’s work in her life.

‘It could do with being a little larger. With myself and Atlas to accommodate, one of us always ends up a little too far from the fire for comfort,’ he said and gently set her down in the smaller chair before she could demand to get there on her own one foot and a stick.

‘It seems truly comfortable to me,’ she admitted as she shivered at the idea of all that lay outside this warm room and how deeply uncomfortable her day had been so far.

‘We can argue about that when we try to decide how to find you a respectable place to sleep in such a confined space later,’ he told her as he sank to his knees in front of her and insisted on removing her stained shoe.

He gave her an impatient look when she batted his hand away from her torn stocking and insisted on undoing her own garter after he turned his back.

‘Done?’ he asked irritably and stared into the fire as if it annoyed him nearly as much as his uninvited guest.

‘Yes,’ she admitted, once she wasn’t biting her lip to conceal how much that small movement hurt her.

‘Good, now let me have a proper look at it,’ he said, as if mentally girding his loins for an unpleasant task. ‘This will probably hurt, but I would be grateful if you could manage not to scream, since my children are asleep upstairs. They would normally sleep through cannonfire, but I doubt a lady screeching at the top of her voice could fail to wake them and I don’t need more complications.’

So he had children, did he? He’d made no mention of his wife so it seemed likely he was a widower and she went back to wondering if she was as safe after all. Yet there was no air of menace to this man such as she had felt so terrifyingly earlier today from the highwaymen and, once or twice, on the dance floors of Mayfair when a so-called gentleman insisted on brushing too close as they moved through the figures of the dance together. This man might not overtly threaten a young lady’s honour, but he had surprising presence for the rough woodsman his clothes, cottage and everything but his voice proclaimed him to be. He sank to his knees in front of her again and she was determined to show him not all ladies screeched and fainted at the slightest provocation, or even, she revised with a muffled gasp, quite a lot of provocation.

He had dark-gold hair, she catalogued desperately, as the sickening pain of having her injury even this gently prodded surged through her with an oily chill. There was a touch of auburn to it in the firelight and it made for a distinctive contrast with the darkness of his brows and the golden tan of an outdoorsman under his end-of-day stubble of whiskers. He had strong rather than patrician features and a bony nose, but there was a hint of humour about his expressive mouth that saved his face seeming austere as a medieval monk’s.

Since she had avoided his gaze when they came into the mellow light of what smelt like a luxurious wax candle rather than the stink of tallow she expected, she had no idea of the colour of his eyes. Such faint light probably wouldn’t show it anyway, even if she somehow found the courage to meet his shrewdly assessing gaze, but he had the most amazingly long and thick dark lashes she had ever seen on a man. Meanwhile, the touch of his work-worn hand on her tender foot was surprisingly gentle and she let herself watch him prod and probe her poor battered feet to divert herself from the pain and noticed his fingers were long and sensitive, as well as clearly strong and very fit for whatever purpose he set them by day.

She took in the scent of him without the sort of indelicate snuffle she had allowed herself on smelling smoke from the blessed fire that was now thawing out her aching limbs when she was still in darkness and she decided he shared that oddly clean smell of wood-smoke and deep woodland she had appreciated with what she thought might be her last breath. Add to that a touch of soap and clean man and she concluded he washed of a night, perhaps at the same time as he bathed his children, so he could leap into action of a morning with only an early morning shave.

Only just restraining herself from adding touch to her exploration of him, she pulled her hand back in time not to explore his overlong thatch of curly hair and see if it felt as alive and wilful as she thought it must be under her probing fingers. Perhaps that was why he lived out here in the middle of nowhere, because the family who had made sure he was educated and taught the manners and speech of a gentleman then found they couldn’t control him either. He looked like a man who went his own way, so why would that way bring him to a humble woodsman’s cottage in the heart of the most remote forest he could find?

Everything about the man was a puzzle and when he met her eyes with cool resignation, she could see that he knew it. Whatever shade his eyes were there was no cruel, hot greed in them as there had been in the eyes of the men who attacked her coach today and those of her parliamentary suitor. She had been desperately frightened and on the verge of a very un-Freya-like attack of the vapours all day, but suddenly the world seemed to rock back on to its proper axis.

‘You’re probably wishing you’d never found me lying out there now,’ she said as he knelt at her feet like a subject king.

‘Shall we say you could prove a mixed blessing, Perdita, and leave it at that?’ he said as he rose to his feet and moved into what she presumed was a scullery from the cool air that wafted in and reminded her how much night there was out there to be terrified of.

‘Isn’t she the heroine of A Winter’s Tale?’ she questioned and caught herself presuming cottage dwellers didn’t read Shakespeare. ‘I’m sorry to sound so astonished,’ she added as he reappeared with a bowl and some rags. ‘Out here in the midst of nowhere, I dare say you read to pass the long winter hours when you cannot work.’

‘I dare say I do,’ he said uninformatively and she began to realise there were areas of his odd way of life he refused to lay open for her to read and became even more intrigued.

‘Pray, what is your name?’ she asked with some of Lady Freya’s haughty assurance.

He raised his eyebrows and went on soaking rags in the icy water as if only the slight wind getting up outside had disturbed the peace of the night, other than Atlas’s lusty snores.

‘It will seem odd if I address you as “sir” or “you”, will it not?’ she said in this new Perdita’s softer tone and found she liked it better as well.

‘You can call me Orlando,’ he said at last, kneeling at her feet again and startling a gasp out of her as he bound the ice-cold wet rags about her flinching foot.

‘Oh, so we’re galloping through As You Like It now, are we?’ she ventured when the initial shock had passed and she felt every muscle and bone in her misused foot sigh in relief.

‘We are wherever we choose to be,’ he said quizzically, then got to his feet and looked down at her as if he could read her life history in her eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, fervently hoping he couldn’t.

‘For giving you the liberty not to be yourself, or doing all I can to relieve the pain?’

‘Perhaps for both?’

‘You’re very welcome, lady,’ he told her with a courtly bow that seemed as sharply at odds with his humble circumstances as his educated accent.

‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said with a regal gesture and a wry smile in return.

‘Now there’s only the problem of where you can bed down for the night to deal with,’ Rich said, turning away from the temptation of this suddenly enchanting lost lady.

Left to his own wayward devices, he might linger half the night talking with her if he wasn’t careful. She intrigued him with the odd contrast of dowager queen and lonely hoyden she seemed to switch between as her moods changed, or he got a little too close to the truth of who she might be for her comfort. He’d seen such mischief in her extraordinary amber eyes just now that he knew she was far more complex a person than either role allowed. He wished now that he hadn’t plonked the candle so close to her that he could see the true glory of her unusual eyes when he rose from attending to her foot by its flaring light and felt as if he might fall headlong into them if he wasn’t very careful indeed.

‘If you can endure Atlas snoring all night long on the rug next to it, I think you’d best take the box-bed in the corner. My son and daughter will bounce out of their own beds on to mine before the sun is hardly risen tomorrow and I don’t think your ankle would like two wild animals stamping about on it if I lend you mine for the night and sleep here instead.’

‘After today it seems almost beyond wonderful to borrow such a cosy bed for the night. I defy any thief or rogue who found this place by an unlucky accident to get to me before he got to them, so I’m very happy that your dog will bear me company,’ his waif said cheerfully and clearly found his simple life an intriguing novelty.

After a few days his mundane existence would pall on a princess in hiding and he hoped he would be rid of her long before then, before they recklessly explored the daring female under all those rigidly correct manners of hers and complicated this inconvenient business even further.

‘I’ll make you a posset to take away the worst of the pain and while it’s brewing I can make up the bed for you,’ he said, in what he hoped was the detached tone of a dutiful host.

‘Thank you, Orlando, you’re treating me like royalty,’ she said politely and he told himself it was a good thing the laughing rogue of a few moments ago was back in hiding.

He preferred her withdrawn and coolly polite, he assured himself. He preferred any youthful and even remotely attractive young woman to stay at a distance nowadays. Indeed, he had felt no more than a soon-dismissed masculine reaction to any other woman since he first laid eyes on his darling Anna. It felt like a betrayal of his own beloved that a feral part of him wanted to know far more about Perdita than the colour of her eyes. After the unmatchable joy of making love to his wife, the rest of her sex had faded into friends, or lusty females to be avoided. He told himself feeling even a hint of hunger for this intriguing female was an insult to Anna’s memory.

‘Are you a wise man?’ she asked curiously as he went about the task of adding a pinch of this herb and a dot of that spice with a sweetening of honey to the pot over the fire until he had the right mix to bring her relief from pain, but not leave her drugged and lost in wild dreams.

‘Do you think I would be living miles away from my fellow creatures if I had an iota of sense, Perdita?’ he asked unwarily and saw reawakened curiosity light her fine eyes.

‘You might, if you had reason enough,’ she said shrewdly.

He distrusted the speculative glint in her eyes and set about finding what linens he had to spare for the box-bed that a previous owner of the cottage had built so well it was too much trouble to dismantle when they moved in. It had been all that was left, apart from most of the roof, the walls and part of the chimney, when he and Anna had found this place and claimed it for their own, since nobody else wanted it.

‘Maybe I don’t like company,’ he let himself mutter loudly enough for her to hear and felt a pang of guilt at the long Seaborne tradition of hospitality he was betraying.

‘Next time I run away from a pack of desperate and dangerous rogues, I’ll be sure to bolt in the opposite direction,’ she said with a cool social lightness that set him at a distance and he was contrary enough to dislike it.

‘Were they really so desperate?’

‘Of course they were—why else would I have run so far and so fast I got completely lost to avoid them?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he had the grace to admit, ‘you have been through an appalling ordeal and all that matters is that you recover from your hurts and we somehow manage to reunite you with your friends and family as soon as we can. They must be desperately worried about you by now, so I could make sure a letter is delivered to inform them you’re safe and reasonably unharmed, if you would care to write one.’

She was silent for a long moment and he began to wonder if she had fallen asleep by the fire. He reluctantly turned to look at her in time to see her shake her head regretfully and look a little mournful and sorry for herself for the first time.

‘There is no one,’ she said bleakly. ‘It was a hired coach and the relatives I left behind will not miss me. I thank you, sir, but I will not put you to so much trouble on my behalf.’

‘You were travelling alone?’ he heard himself ask disapprovingly and wondered when he’d begun to care what rich and overindulged young ladies did to put themselves in danger nowadays.

‘I’m of age, why should I not?’ she asked as if a young lady hiring a carriage and travelling without either companion or protector was perfectly normal.

‘For the very good reason it turned out to be such a disaster, I should think. You would have done better to travel post and enjoy the protection of an armed guard and the King’s mails.’

‘There’s no post road to my destination.’

‘Which is?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Do you expect me to set you on your way to the nearest village in the morning so you can blithely limp off into more ill-advised and plainly ridiculous escapades? How can I turn my back on a disaster in petticoats like you and leave you to wander about the country with no more idea how to go on than my three-year-old daughter?’

‘I know how to conduct myself,’ she informed him in her best mistress-of-all-she-surveyed voice.

‘So well you just informed a complete stranger nobody will notice if you disappear for good, so I could make a quick getaway after foully doing away with you or having my wicked way with you, whatever you have to say about it? I begin to think my Sally has more sense in her currently very little finger than you have in your whole head, Princess Perdita.’

Chapter Three

For a moment the girl looked disconcerted by the realisation he was right and she’d put herself totally in his power. She rapidly rebuilt her innate assurance she was right and the rest of the world wrong and drew herself up to give him a disdainful look worthy of his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Dettingham, in her most formidable glory. Wondering if this aristocrat had ever met the one lady who would be able to stare her down and stand none of her nonsense, Rich tried not to admire the stony dignity she was facing him with. For some reason he liked his granddam a lot more than the rest of the family did and found his unwanted visitor’s steely poise unexpectedly endearing.

‘I trust you,’ she finally admitted very quietly. He felt another burden settle on his shoulders and suppressed a gusty sigh.

‘You can,’ he promised easily enough. ‘I’m no killer and can imagine nothing more repulsive than forcing myself on a woman against her will.’

‘Clearly my judgement isn’t as bad as you think, then,’ she argued gallantly, but he could see the blue shadows under her lioness’s eyes and the stark pallor of her face and knew it was only her steadfast spirit that held her upright in her chair right now.