Candace Camp - Indiscreet

He clamped one hand tightly around her arm and began to walk her toward the post chaise. Camilla dug in her heels. “Wait! I am not going anywhere with you.”

“I think you would be far better off back in Edgecombe than you would be standing around in the dark in the middle of the countryside with a large group of men with guns wandering about.”

“I didn’t say that I was staying here! What I meant was that you are not going anywhere in my carriage.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then dropped her arm and stepped back. “Of course. You are right. It is your carriage, and I have no claim to it. I shall leave you, then. Good day, madam.”

He turned and started striding away. Stunned, Camilla stared after him. Then she remembered that her coachman was unconscious—oh, Lord, might he even have killed the poor man?—and while she could handle a gig, it was quite beyond her powers to drive a coach-and-four. Not only that, there was a band of men with guns who were perhaps still pursuing her carriage.

“Wait!” she called, and when the stranger did not stop, she took a few running steps after him. “Stop! Please?”

He turned and looked back at her, his eyebrows raised inquisitively. “Yes?”

“Don’t go. I—I cannot drive the post chaise back to Edgecombe.”

“Mmm. Then it would seem that you have a certain problem with your carriage. Good night.”

“Oh, stop being so exasperating! I am telling you that you can go with me to Edgecombe.”

“You mean that you are allowing me the honor of working for you?” he asked sardonically. “How kind of you. But I am afraid I must decline the honor. You see, I think it would be better for me to walk. One man in the fog is far less noticeable than a great carriage.”

“Horses are faster.”

He shrugged and turned to walk off again.

“Stop! You cannot leave me here! No gentleman would leave a lady stranded like this.”

“Well, as you have no doubt realized, I am not much of a gentleman, and, frankly, I have yet to see any ladylike qualities in you.”

Camilla glared at him. “All right. Have you satisfied your need to insult me? Let us go, then. We both know that it would be absurd for you to walk when there is a coach right here. We do not like each other, but surely we can trade—your skill at driving the horses for the use of my post chaise.”

He said nothing, just walked back and swung up to the top of the coach. Camilla quickly climbed back in, and they set out again, this time at a speed more suited to the rutted track. It was fast enough to rattle and jounce Camilla around in her seat, and she suspected darkly that the awful man was doing it simply to annoy her.

Adding to her discomfort was the state of her hair and clothes. This morning she had been dressed quite charmingly in a sprigged muslin gown and green kid half boots, and her hair had been pulled up to the crown of her head, from which point it hung in a cluster of fetching curls. Now her shoes were a sodden mess, soaked through and caked with mud, inside and out, and her dress and hair were in almost as bad a state. She was wet clear through to her underthings. Her curls, too, were thick with mud, and she could feel it drying on her skin, as well.

How was she going to explain her state when she arrived at the Park? Tears welled up in her eyes. As if she did not have problems enough already, what with Grandpapa and the terrible lies she had woven…. To have to arrive looking like a ragamuffin seemed like the outside of enough.

Grimly she blinked her tears away. She refused to cry over this. If nothing else, her tears would leave tracks on her dirty cheeks, making it obvious that she had been crying. And no doubt he would think that she had been crying because of him. She grimaced as her thoughts turned to the obnoxious man who had virtually abducted her.

He was uncouth, low and thoroughly maddening. He had treated her reprehensibly. No man of breeding would have grabbed her so roughly or pinned her to the ground like that. She remembered the bold way his eyes had lingered over her breasts, revealed by the thin, wet material of her dress. It made her blush, even sitting there alone in the dark carriage, to think of the way his legs had clamped around hers, of how intimately his body had been pressed against her—and of the shocking movement his body had made as he looked at her. It had felt so strange—almost exhilarating, even at the same time that it was utterly improper and infuriating.

She shifted on her seat, pulling her sodden dress away from her. She was growing more and more uncomfortable by the moment. The mud was continuing to dry on her, and her clothes were sticking to her flesh. Worst of all, her wet garments were quite cold, so that she was shivering almost continuously. She wanted to drape her cloak around her to help keep off some of the cold, but she hated to get mud all over the inside of it. Still…she could hardly just sit there and catch a chill. She was eyeing the cloak uncertainly when she became aware of the fact that the carriage was rattling over cobblestones. With a suppressed cry, she pushed aside the curtain and looked out to see that they had entered the village.

Within moments, they were turning into the yard of the Blue Boar. Camilla let out a sigh of relief. Though she had tried not to let herself think about it, she had been worried that the stranger would not really take her into the village at all, but, realizing the dangers of her being able to identify him, would abandon her on some dark and lonely road…or worse.

Now, with a cry, she jerked open the door of the carriage even before they came to a complete stop and jumped down from it. “Boy, see to the horses,” she called to the ostler, who had started across the yard toward their vehicle. “And look to my coachman, too. I fear we may have to send for a doctor.”

The ostler came to a dead halt, goggling at her, but Camilla did not notice. She was already hurrying to the front door, her only thought to get safely inside before the stranger atop the chaise could catch up with her.

As soon as she stepped inside the public room, all conversation came to a halt, and everyone swiveled around to stare at her. Camilla stopped short, dismayed at being the focus of so many sets of eyes. In her relief at reaching the Blue Boar, she had forgotten about her appearance, but now those stunned expressions reminded her of just how she looked. Her hand went to her mud-encrusted ringlets, and she glanced down at her wet gown, pressed to her body in a most improper way, one sleeve completely ripped away. A wave of deep red washed up her face to her hairline.

The keeper of the inn, a large, bluff man, started toward her from his post at the tap. Camilla saw him and was swept by relief. “Saltings! How glad I am to see you!”

She took a step or two forward, then stopped as he said, “Here, now, miss, what do you think you be doing? Coming in here like that! This is a decent inn, it is, and we’ve no use—”

“Saltings!” Camilla exclaimed, shaken. “Don’t you recognize me?” Tears of humiliation sprang into her eyes. This seemed the last straw, the perfectly awful end to a perfectly awful day—that Saltings, who had known her all her life, should mistake her for a common doxy. Was he actually going to toss her out?

The man stopped and peered at her. “Do I know you?”

“It is I! Camilla Ferrand!” Tears flooded her eyes. She could not hold them back, and they spilled over, coursing a trail through the smear of mud on her cheeks.

“Miss Ferrand!” he repeated, his jaw dropping. “Sweet Lord, what happened? What are you doing here this way?”

He went to her, gently taking her arm and steering her toward the smaller private room of the inn, then stopped. “Oh, dear, no, there’s a gentleman there.” He took another glance at Camilla beside him, muddy and disheveled and struggling to hold back her tears, then at the rest of his customers, all staring avidly.