Gail Eastwood (2 page)

The earl used his voice and presence to clear a path just wide enough to squeeze through, leaving Archie to follow in his wake. “I believe we might be of some service,” he said, inclining his head as he approached the pair.

They turned to him, the tall one’s face eager with hope and surprise, the short one’s frowning with suspicion. Brinton thought they were as mismatched a couple as he had ever seen.

“I realize we are not known to one another, but my friend and I have decided we should place our room at your disposal.”

“Your room?” responded the blond youth in some confusion. “You are very kind, indeed, sir! But will you not be needing it? Surely you are not thinking to venture out in this maelstrom!”

The earl chuckled. “I am not sure whether the maelstrom outside is any worse than the one in here, but I can assure you we are not going out. I meant that, as gentlemen, we could manage to share our quarters!”

Brinton couldn’t help the slight emphasis on the word “gentlemen” any more than he could resist stealing a quick look at the smaller traveler to see if there was any reaction. Those blue-green eyes were fastened on him for a moment, and he thought he saw the cheeks pale before the face turned away.

The tall youth stretched out his hand with enthusiastic gratitude. “Would you really do that, sir? That’s uncommonly kind!” He was interrupted by a sudden jerk on his arm that pulled his hand down. His small companion was attempting to become a barrier between him and the generous gentlemen, shaking his head vehemently.

“What’s the matter?”

“We cannot do this, Gilbey.” The voice was low and soft.

“Yes, we can,” the blond traveler hissed back.

The two stared at each other for a moment, locked in their dispute and unmindful of their audience.

“Why on earth not?” insisted the tall youth. He was attempting to whisper. “Do you want to spend the night in this hallway or back out on the street? It is our only other choice.”

The one called Gilbey turned back to the earl and Spelling with an apologetic look. His heightened color betrayed his embarrassment. “My brother doesn’t like to accept charity,” he said quickly, dropping his eyes. He fidgeted with a button on his coat. “He didn’t realize that of course I mean to pay for our share of your hospitality—oww!” He cringed and cast an agonized look toward his companion, who had quite deliberately kicked his shin.

The earl hid his amusement. These two were a far cry from the usual besotted lovebirds who sought marriage over the border.

“Why don’t we remove ourselves from this rather public situation,” he suggested, inclining his head toward the stairs. “I am sure we can come to an agreement over the details.”

Without waiting for an answer, Brinton began to move off in the direction he had indicated.

***

In two hundred years of service the Ram’s Head had acquired a weary but comfortable crookedness that permeated everything from the window frames to the wall timbers. Spelling led the way down a dimly lit passage as narrow and twisted as the stairs.

“Aha! At least we have a fire,” he exclaimed as he unlocked and flung wide the door to their room. “Perhaps you’ll believe me after all when I tell you this inn is usually top notch.”

The little procession filed into the room with Brinton in the rear. Depositing their burdens, they regrouped around the welcoming warmth of the hearth.

The room was small, with a low ceiling, a large fireplace, and one small diamond-paned window. Candle braces on the mantel supplemented the flickering light from the fire. Most of the space was taken up by a huge, heavily ornamented canopy bed swathed in blue damask. Not very generously endowed with quilts or pillows, it was at least neatly made. A small table and two chairs stood in one corner. The room smelled mostly of candle wax and stale pipe tobacco, but from somewhere there was also a scent of lavender.

“They always scent the beds here,” Archie disclosed proudly. “It’s one of their trademark touches.”

“Beats changing the linens,” Brinton commented under his breath. Addressing their guests he said, “This may be a bit cramped, but it is definitely a more suitable setting to make one another’s acquaintance. However, I think our first order of business should be to see you out of those wet things and warm by the fire.”

The smaller traveler had turned toward the hearth and seemed to be soaking in the heat, hardly aware of anyone else. The fire threw its rosy glow on a delicately pointed chin and cheeks that were like flawless ivory.

Brinton was certain now that his guest was female. Coming up the stairs he had positioned himself behind her in order to better observe her. Although the heavy traveling cloak concealed its wearer admirably, it could not disguise her posture or the way she moved, which seemed decidedly feminine.

Shivering and wearing gloves far too large for her, she had also had trouble carrying the meat and the kitchen knife Spelling had handed to her when he had picked up her leather satchel. Now she had removed her wet gloves and was rubbing hands as small and white as Rafferty had suspected. At his words she clutched at her cloak and pulled it closer around her.

The one called Gilbey seemed relieved that introductions were not going to be the first order. He, too, was warming his hands and shed his coat gratefully. As if sensing his partner’s reluctance to follow suit, he turned to assist her.

Brinton studied the two carefully.
His hands don’t linger the way a lover’s should—the way mine would
, he caught himself thinking. As soon as the thought crossed his mind he chastised himself for it. But the young man’s tender concern seemed to meet hostility that was almost as tangible as if the girl had slapped him. She glared and pulled away from his touch.

The earl couldn’t help smiling, although he wasn’t sure why that amused him. As the girl’s cloak slipped from her shoulders, he exchanged a telling look with Archie. Wet, her ill-fitting male clothing only emphasized her unmistakably female shape.

As if he could cover her by conversation, her partner turned to Brinton. “With all due respect, sir,” he ventured, “couldn’t our first order of business be to have a bit of that mutton?”

Rafferty opened his mouth to reply and promptly closed it. Damned if the boy’s eyes weren’t an exact match for the girl’s! He hadn’t noticed it before, but now he looked closely to be sure it wasn’t a trick of the poor light. “Of course, forgive me!” he said, covering his thoughts. “I thought you would be hungry—that’s why we brought it along.” Yes, the eyes were that same aquamarine. The lad’s blond and alabaster coloring differed from the girl’s as dramatically as their opposite statures, but on close inspection his face showed a finely sculptured nose and chin very much like hers.

Ha! Not lovers at all
, the earl thought happily.
They are some sort of relations
. But he could not reflect then on why this discovery put him in such good humor. “Sit, eat,” he said, gesturing toward the table where Archie had placed the meat.

The tall youth took the shivering girl by the hand to lead her to the table, but she snatched her hand away. As they sat down, he glanced back at the earl with a wry grin. “You must forgive my brother. He’s not prone to indulge in small talk.”

Brinton replied to the boy with an impishly raised eyebrow and a sidelong glance that included Spelling as coconspirator. “We are not offended, are we, Archie? We have noticed your brother has his own less subtle way of communicating with you, and I think I may say we are glad to be spared!”

Both Spelling and the young man laughed. The girl, who had already tackled the mutton hungrily, stiffened her spine and turned her back to all three men.

“Allow me to make the introductions, since we have no one else to do it for us,” Brinton said more seriously. “I am Julian de Raymond, Lord Brinton.” Only his closest friends knew him as Rafferty. He bowed, an impeccably correct and graceful movement. “This is my associate, Mr. Spelling. We are at your service.”

The young man called Gilbey paused before answering. “Lord Brinton, Mr. Spelling,” he repeated. “It is an honor indeed, my lord, and I’m quite sure it is we who should be at your service as we are most certainly in your debt.” He did not, however, offer his own name or that of his companion.

Brinton decided not to push. He thought the tension in the room fairly crackled. He stopped Spelling from speaking with a very readable eyebrow movement and said instead, “Some cheese and port would be an admirable accompaniment to that mutton. Mr. Spelling and I were just thinking we would go in search of some. It shouldn’t take us long.”

With a slight bow he turned to the door, ushering Spelling ahead of him almost forcibly. They gained the hallway before Archie could utter a syllable. “Forgive me for hastening your steps,” Brinton whispered. “I could feel the heat rising, and I quite believe we were sitting on a powder keg!”

Chapter Two

The door had barely closed behind the two gentlemen before Gillian Kentwell rounded on her twin brother.

“Thank God they have gone! I thought I should explode with trying to stay silent! What are we doing here, Gilbey Kentwell?”

The girl was furious, trembling as much from her anger as from hunger and cold. She snatched the wet cap off her head and shook it in her brother’s face. “Do you want Uncle William to catch us? You deliberately ignored all my protests, Gilbey! We are in a fine coil, now, thanks to you!”

Gilbey took the cap from his sister’s hand and set it on the table. “You can become amazingly irrational when you are hungry,” he said cheerfully. He cut off another piece of meat and held it out to her. “Better eat some more, Gillie.”

Gillian’s eyes flashed deep turquiose and two spots of color stained her cheekbones. “I am not irrational, thank you. I am thinking more clearly than you! Whatever possessed you to take up this offer? The last thing we needed was attention from strangers! I doubt their intentions are honorable! And how long did you suppose I could continue this charade in such close company?” She accepted the meat and bit into it. “We cannot stay here, Gilbey!”

“Did you know of better accomodations elsewhere? You really should have said so.” Gilbey signaled his intention to stay by calmly inserting another piece of mutton into his own mouth.

Gillian jumped up and paced angrily away from the table. Her toes squished against the wet spare stockings stuffed into Gilbey’s old boots along with her small, cold feet. Men! Sometimes her brother was as bad as the rest of them! Men had created this problem, men were complicating the problem, and if she herself could have been a man, none of it would ever have come up in the first place.

“Fine! Sit there chewing.” She made a face at her twin from the unthreatening distance of the fireplace. “You are lucky I don’t grab that carving knife and run you through with it, I’m that angry! A fine protector you turned out to be!”

Gilbey was stung into replying. “All I have done is get us a warm, dry place to spend the night against impossible odds. If you prefer to sleep in the gutter, next time perhaps I should let you!”

Gillian crossed back to her brother, bracing her hands on the table and peering intently into his face. “I would rather be hungry and wet and cold than be hauled back to Devonshire,” she pronounced with dramatic emphasis. “At least in that hallway, or even in the street, no one would have noticed us—especially if you had not raised such a fuss.”

Instead, she thought, she was sharing a room with a strange man whose attention seemed never to leave her. She had felt Brinton watching her from the moment they had started up the stairs. Every time she risked a glance at him, she met his deep-set eyes. They were a warm, distinct hazel.

She thought she detected a hint of amusement in them that was not revealed in his other carefully controlled features. Had his inspection penetrated her disguise? If so, what was he planning to do? She found his ceaseless scrutiny unnerving. She was almost equally discomposed by her own compulsion to look at him.

“We ought to leave now, Gilbey, while they’re not here.”

Her brother stopped sawing on the mutton to wave the knife toward their belongings by the door. “What we ought to do is change into dry clothes. The last thing either of us needs is to take a chill. And there’s no sense in making an awkward situation worse.”

“Awkward! Of all the rattle-brained schemes! This is a worse scrape than anything I ever got us into at home.” Gillian went grudgingly to the portmanteau and began rummaging in it. The muslin she had bound around her breasts so tightly that morning now felt like a cold, soggy bandage that was loosening with every breath. Her head ached and her limbs were still shaking, but she knew the food and dry clothes would help.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t start a debate over who got us into this coil,” Gilbey said with an edge of irritation in his voice. “Whose idea was it to run off to Scotland?”

“I didn’t invite you to come along,” Gillian replied. She had prepared to leave without even confiding in her twin. Gilbey had argued with her when he had discovered her intentions, deciding to go with her when he could not dissuade her.

“I hate to think where you might be already if I hadn’t. How had you planned to manage? Did you really think you could pass for a male all the way to Scotland—alone?”

Gillian pulled out a shirt that was obviously too large for her and, scrunching it into a ball, threw it at her brother. Breeches and stockings followed. Finally, she gathered up the smaller-size castoffs that made up her current wardrobe and moved to the fire.

“I wouldn’t be sharing a room with two strangers who I don’t doubt have designs on our purse, if not our persons! Those two have probably gone to summon their accomplices and will pretend to be robbed along with us when they come back, figuring that we are no match for their men.” She pulled off one boot and held it up, letting a stream of water pour out onto the floor.

“Why are you so convinced they want to rob us?” Gilbey’s voice was muffled as he pulled his wet shirt off over his head.

“I don’t know another reason for them to get involved with two waifs as wretched as we must appear,” Gillian said. She and Gilbey had turned their backs to allow each other some privacy. “Did you not wonder why this so-called ‘Lord Brinton’ stepped in so quickly to take charge of us?” She raised her voice a fraction. “He was standing right there when you advertised our fat purse to the innkeeper and half the population of Taunton.”

She had not forgotten that strangely charged moment when she had first looked up, straight into Brinton’s eyes in the middle of the crowd. As she had stared, suddenly spellbound, she had seen the odd expression that slipped across his face. When she tried to analyze his unorthodox behavior and the peculiar way she kept reacting to him, that moment took on great significance in fueling her distrust. Why didn’t Gilbey see?

For a moment the heartache she was trying so desperately to ignore threatened to break through her overlaying anger. Didn’t they have enough trouble already without borrowing more? Despite her pose as the Great Adventuress, she would not have left home if there had been any other way to escape her uncle’s plotting. She and Gilbey had tried everything else they could think of to scuttle the ill-begotten betrothal their Uncle William had arranged. She was homesick already, yet she and Gilbey had not even been gone a full day!

Where was the excitement she had felt in the morning when they had first set off?
Washed away in the cold rain
, she thought miserably. At this moment doubt and fear weighed on her in place of that eager anticipation. Could she and Gilbey elude their guardian long enough to reach Scotland? She was no longer sure they had wits enough to make it to their second day.

Gillian got herself in hand with a little shake. She would not give way to the megrims any more than she had given in to her uncle’s bleak plan for her future. She looked at the heap of wet things by the fire and sighed, wishing they could stay long enough to dry them. She hated the thought of putting her feet back into the heavy, wet leather boots. But the thought of Brinton and his cohort prodded her. She and Gilbey must not let anyone stop them from getting to Scotland. She padded back over to the portmanteau.

“Are you finished?” asked Gilbey, still with his back politely turned. Gillian wasn’t sure if he meant her toilette or their halted conversation.

“Near enough,” she replied. She searched the bag for her stockings and the short stable jacket she knew must still be in it. She felt comforted when her fingers came in contact with the soft silk of her Spitalfields shawl, wrapped around the square shapes of her mother’s Scottish songbooks. She wondered if Gilbey suspected why the portmanteau was so heavy.

She found the stockings and jacket just as her brother moved to the hearth and began spreading out his clothes to dry.

“Gilbey, you don’t truly expect to stay the night!”

“Of course I do Honestly, Gillie, don’t you trust my judgment at all?”

Gillian frowned. She avoided his gaze by concentrating on buttoning her jacket. “Don’t you think those two have guessed that I’m a woman?”

Gilbey returned to the table and reclaimed his chair. “‘Those two’, as you keep calling them, happen to be gentlemen. They can’t openly dispute my word when I say you’re my brother. They’ll go along with it.” He began to work on the mutton again, cutting the meat into small pieces.

Gillian gave a most unladylike snort. Brinton’s incessant staring could hardly be considered gentlemanly behavior. It was rude at best and would have been shockingly forward if she was supposed to be female. But Gilbey obviously had not noticed.

“I expect they think we are easier marks than ever if they have already guessed. I say we pack up our things this moment and be on our way.”

Gilbey said nothing. The expression on his face was mulish.

“If you will not do this, Gilbey, at least tell them we have a pistol. Perhaps if they think we are armed, they will not be so quick to chalk us.”

Brinton and Spelling had headed straight for the kitchen upon leaving the twins.

“I thought service to my country had hardened me, Archie,” the earl said as they made their way down the narrow stairs. “Now I find it is not so.”

“You weren’t thinking of giving them the bed?” Archie responded in mock alarm.

Brinton laughed. “Would I do that? I was not referring to creature comforts, actually. I meant my heart—either it or my head is still soft after all.”

“Better those than a certain other part of your anatomy,” Archie teased. “You were always the man for a lady in distress, Raff! But I can’t see where your interest will get you if she’s already headed for Gretna Green!”

“I no longer think that is the case,” the earl answered.

“What?”

“I doubt they are lovers, Archie. More likely relations. Did you not notice the resemblance between them? And I think they are quarreling up there even as we speak.”

“Relations don’t signify,” Archie argued. “Cousins marry all the time! As for quarrels, what better proof of love could you ask for?” He laughed. “I think you’ve developed a case of wishful thinking! I’ll wager my matched grays they’re headed for Gretna Green. But I’ll not settle for anything less than your Tristan against my famous grays.”

Brinton hesitated. He seldom gambled without a good sense of the odds, although his luck was almost legendary. He took pride in the reliability of his instincts, yet what did he know? Nothing for certain. Could Archie be right about wishful thinking? Were emotions clouding his judgment?

***

He wondered again when he felt the pleasure sparked by the mere sight of the girl as he and Spelling returned to their room, laden with bounty salvaged from the kitchen.

“We were successful beyond our wildest dreams,” Spelling announced cheerfully, brandishing a decanter of ruby port and a tray with glasses and a large wedge of cheese.

The girl had been standing bareheaded near the fire, her luxuriant curls fully exposed. At their entrance she clapped a hand to her head and sent an agonized look to her companion, who promptly tossed over the cap she had left on the table.

The exchange amused the earl. He noted with satisfaction the wet clothes spread before the hearth and the drier ensembles that now clothed his guests. The tension in the room seemed at least reduced.

“I’m pleased to see you have both found something dry to put on,” he said, nodding in approval. “A further bit of refreshment and you will feel much more the thing.”

He moved close behind the girl and, stopping there, gently removed her soggy cap and tossed it onto the hearth. “There is no need to be uncomfortable,” he said softly.

Her hair was a magnificent color, touched with red where it gleamed in the candlelight, but dark where a wet tendril lay against her ear. He could smell the rain-washed freshness of it. The urge to touch it was so strong, he could not allow himself to move at all for a moment.

“Your brother here needs to know that he is quite safe with us,” he said, addressing his remark to Gilbey.

The lad nodded, but the girl stood absolutely rigid in front of Brinton. She was so small! She came no higher than his shoulder. He could tell she was holding her breath, and he felt a little twinge of satisfaction to know that he could affect her.

“You may have difficulty convincing my brother of that,” Gilbey confessed, nervously clearing his throat. “It shames me to tell you, after all your generosity, but it seems he is convinced the two of you have designs on our purse.” Gilbey’s face was nearly scarlet. “He felt it only fair to warn you that we are armed with a pistol, and are in such desperate need of our blunt we would be quite prepared to defend it. . . .”

Brinton and Spelling exchanged amused looks, then the earl threw back his head and laughed loudly. It was not quite the cool behavior expected of a fashionable gentleman.

“And now that you have so gallantly warned us,” said Brinton, restoring some of his polite control, “would that stop us from robbing you if, indeed, that was our intent?”

Gilbey flushed even deeper and looked down at the table. His silent partner stared stonily into the fire as if she hadn’t heard at all.

“If I might offer some friendly advice,” Brinton went on, “don’t let anyone know you have a weapon.” A smile was playing at the corners of his mouth. “That is almost as foolish as letting them know you have a heavy purse! Preserve the advantage of surprise.”

Brinton put his hands on Gillian’s shoulders and turned her toward the table. “Come, sit down and eat and drink. I’m sure you need to be warmed on the inside as much as the outside.”

Gillian in fact felt as if she was on fire from his touch. If he hadn’t wanted her to feel uncomfortable, why had he stood so unbearably close? His proximity had created a warm tingling in her bones that numbed her mind. She had not dared to breathe. Now she felt foolish and confused as well. She stumbled toward the chair and sat down opposite her brother, accepting a glass of port with trembling fingers.