Slightly Wicked

Chapter IV

Rain was pelting against the window. It had not stopped all night. Travel would surely be impossible this morning. Perhaps there would be a little more time after all.

Judith did not open her eyes. She was lying half on her back, half on her side on the bed, a warm arm beneath her neck, its partner draped heavily across her waist. Her legs were all tangled up with two others. He was breathing deeply, still asleep. He smelled of cologne and sweat and man. It was a curiously pleasant smell.

She really had been inebriated last night, else surely she would never have come even close to doing what she had done. This morning she was sober with a slight headache as an aftermath of drinking more than she ought. This morning she could understand the enormity of what she had done. It was not just that she was now a fallen woman—that did not matter one iota to her in light of her imminent fate as a dependent relative and fading spinster. It was more that she now knew what was going to be missing from all the rest of her life. Last night she had thought that the memories would be enough. This morning she was not so sure.

And this morning she had thought of something else too—oh, she really must have been very drunk. She might have been got with child during any one of last night’s four separate encounters. There was panic in the thought, which she tried to quell by concentrating on her breathing. Well, she would know soon enough. Her courses were due within the next few days. If nothing happened ...

She would think of that later.

It had been a glorious night indeed. His belief that she was an actress and an experienced courtesan had spurred her on into role-playing as nothing ever had before. Those four glasses of wine had helped too, no doubt. She could hardly believe the things she had done, the things he had done to her, the things they had done together, the sheer fun of it all. And the exquisite sensual delights.

She had never suspected that Judith Law was capable of overcoming a lifetime of strict moral training to become a wanton. She listened to the rain and willed it not to stop. Not yet.

Ralph sighed against her ear and then stretched lazily without untwining himself from her.

“Mmm,” he said. “I am delighted to discover that all that was not just a delectable dream.”

“Good morning.” She turned her face to him and then flushed at the absurd formality of her words.

“Good indeed.” He regarded her with lazy blue eyes. “Is that rain I hear against the glass?”

“I daresay,” she said, “no coach will dare attempt travel on the open highway while it continues. Will you risk your horse’s safety or your own?”

“Neither.” His eyes smiled. “I suppose that means we are stranded here for today and probably tonight again, Claire. Can you imagine a more dreadful fate?”

“If I tried very hard I might,” she said and watched the smile spread to his lips.

“We are going to be killed by boredom,” he said. “However are we going to fill in the time?”

“We will have to set our minds to the problem,” she told him, her voice deliberately grave. “Perhaps together we will find a solution.”

“If nothing else occurs to us,” he said with a sigh, “we will have no choice but to remain in bed and while away the weary hours here until the rain stops and the roads begin to dry.”

“How very boring,” she said.

His eyes held hers. “Boring,” he said, his voice pitched low. “Yes, indeed.”

She understood his meaning suddenly, flushed, and then laughed. “The pun was unintentional,” she told him.

“What pun?”

She laughed again.

“However,” he said, drawing his arm from beneath her head and rolling away from her to sit up on the side of the bed, “the boring part of the day is going to have to be delayed. I am for my breakfast. I could eat an ox. Are you hungry?”

She was. Very. She wished she had more money. He had paid for the room and their dinner and was presumably prepared to do the same tonight. She could not expect him to continue footing the bill for her all day long.

“A cup of tea will do for me,” she said.

He got out of bed and turned to look down at her, stretching as he did so, apparently quite unself-conscious about his nakedness. But then, why would he be? He was splendidly formed. She could not stop herself from feasting her eyes on him.

“That is not very flattering,” he said, looking down at her with his rather mocking smile. “Good sex is supposed to make one ravenous. But all you want is a cup of tea?”

That word—sex—had never been spoken aloud at the rectory or in any company of which she had been a part. It was a word she had always skirted around even in her thoughts, choosing euphemisms instead. He spoke the word as if it were part of his everyday vocabulary—as it probably was.

“It was good.” She sat up, careful to keep the blankets over her bosom and beneath her arms, and clasped her knees. “You know that.”

He looked closely at her for a few moments. “How empty is your purse?” he asked her.

She could feel herself flushing again. “I did not expect to have to stop on the road, you see,” she explained. “I brought only what I thought I would need for a nonstop journey. There is always the danger of highwaymen.”

“How can an actress of your caliber be out of work for three months?” he asked her.

“Oh, I was not out of work,” she assured him. “I took time off deliberately because I was—because I was tired of being constantly from home. I do that occasionally. And I do have money. I just do not have it with me.”

“Where is home?” he asked her.

Their eyes clashed.

“Somewhere,” she said. “It is private. My own retreat. I never tell anyone where it is.”

“Let me guess,” he said. “You are a proud, independent woman, who does not allow any man to protect and support you.”

“That is right,” she said. If only it were true .

“This occasion will have to be something of an exception, then,” he told her. “I will not offer to pay you for your services. I believe our desire for each other and our pleasure in satisfying that desire have been mutual. But I will pay your keep for as long as we are here. You do not have to starve yourself on tea and water.”

“Can you afford it?” she asked him.

“I have always believed,” he said, “that any highwayman who chose to attack me would have to be soft in the head and that if he was not, he certainly would be by the time I had finished with him. I do not travel with an empty purse. I can afford to buy you breakfast and all your other meals too for as long as we remain here.”

“Thank you.” She could not suggest that she pay him back at some future date. She would never have enough money.

“Now,” he said, “tell me that I was good enough last night to make you hungry this morning.”

“Ravenous.” She smiled at him. “You were very good, as you know full well.”

“Aha,” he said, leaning a little closer, “another human trait. You have a dimple beside the right corner of your mouth.”

That sobered her. The triumvirate of childhood plagues— a freckled carrottop with a dimple.

“It is utterly charming,” he said. “I am going to wash and dress and go downstairs, Claire. You can follow me down when you are ready. We might as well eat in the public dining room this morning and see something of the world. It is going to be a long day.”

Judith hoped it would be an eternity long. She hugged her knees tightly as he disappeared behind the screen.

It struck Rannulf that fate had dealt him a pretty fair hand. Normally being stranded at a small town inn by inclement weather would have been the stuff of nightmares. Under any other circumstances he would have been chafing at the bit and scheming to find a way to get himself and his horse safely to his grandmother’s despite the danger. He realized that he was no farther than twenty miles from Grandmaison Park.

But these were not other circumstances, and it helped to know that his grandmother did not even realize that he was on his way, though she always expected him to come promptly when summoned. He could delay his arrival for a week or more if he wished without every constable in the land being called out to search for him.

When she appeared in the downstairs dining room, Claire Campbell was dressed in a pale green cotton dress, even simpler than yesterday’s muslin. She had brushed her hair back severely over the crown of her head and braided and coiled it at the back of her neck. He had become accustomed to the way she understated her charms. This was an actress with class, he decided, rising and bowing to her.

They ate a hearty breakfast at a leisurely pace, conversing about inconsequentials until the innkeeper brought them more toast and stayed to discuss the farming situation and the blessing the rain would be after weeks of hot, dry weather. Then his wife brought freshly boiled water to heat up their tea and stayed to talk about the nasty weather and all the extra work it gave the women, who had to be constantly scrubbing their floors because their men and children would insist upon going outside in the rain, even when they did not have to, and traipsing all the wet and all the mud across clean floors no matter how often one scolded them or chased them with a broom. Indeed, she said, chasing them only made the matter worse, because then they would flee farther into the building than out of it, and even if they did run out, eventually they came back in and the whole business started again.

Claire laughed and commiserated.

Before many minutes had passed, the innkeeper and his wife had pulled up two chairs, the wife had poured herself a cup of tea while the innkeeper had fetched himself a tankard of ale, and they settled in for a lengthy chat.

It considerably amused Rannulf that he was sitting at a table in an inn that no stretch of the imagination could describe as fashionable, fraternizing with the servants. Bewcastle, his brother, the duke, would have frozen them into two icicles with a single glance. He would have quelled their pretensions with the mere lifting of one finger or one eyebrow. But then one look at Bewcastle and no one below the rank of baron at the very least would dream of even raising his gaze from the floor unless invited to do so.

“Why,” the innkeeper asked suddenly, “was Mrs. Bedard on the stagecoach, sir, while you was on horseback?”

“We been wondering,” his wife explained.

Rannulf met Claire’s eyes across the table. Her cheeks had turned pink.

“Oh dear,” she said, “you tell them, Ralph.”

She was the actress. Why could she not come up with a suitable tale? He gazed at her for a few moments, but she was looking back at him as expectantly as the other two were. He cleared his throat.

“I did not take the delicacy of my wife’s sensibilities into account at our wedding breakfast,” he said without taking his eyes off her. “Some of our guests had imbibed too much of the wine, and a few of them—my own cousins, in fact— made some risqué remarks. Embarrassed though I was, I laughed. My bride did not. She excused herself, and it was only later that I discovered she had fled her own wedding night.”

The color had deepened in her cheeks.

“See?” the innkeeper’s wife said, poking her husband in the ribs with one large elbow. “I told you they was newlyweds.”

“I finally caught up to her yesterday,” Rannulf continued and watched her catch her lower lip between her teeth. “I am happy to report that I have been forgiven for my inappropriate laughter and all is now well.”

Her eyes widened.

The innkeeper’s wife turned her head to beam tenderly at Claire.

“Don’t you mind none, ducks,” she said. “The first time is the worst. I didn’t hear no sobbings, mind, and I don’t see no trace of tears this morning, so I daresay it was not so bad as you feared. I expect Mr.

Bedard knows how to do it right proper.” She laughed conspiratorially and Claire joined her.

Rannulf glanced sheepishly at the innkeeper, who glanced sheepishly back.

They went outside after breakfast, Rannulf and Claire, though he was surprised when she asked to join him. He wanted to see his horse, to make sure it had taken no harm yesterday and had been properly tended. He wanted to rub it down and feed it himself this morning. Claire put on her half boots and her cloak with the hood up, and they made a dash for it across the open yard, trying to step on tufts of grass as they went and avoid the worst of the mud and manure.

She sat on a clean pile of hay while he worked, her hood back, her hands clasped about her knees.

“That was some story,” she said.

“About you as skittish bride? I thought so too.” He grinned at her.

“The landlady is going to tidy our rooms herself and make sure fresh fires are laid in the hearth in both rooms,” she said. “It must be a great honor to have her personal services instead of those of the maid. It seems hardly fair so to deceive them, Ralph.”

“You would rather we told the truth, then?” he asked. His horse was looking none the worse for wear, though it was doing some restless snorting. It wanted to be out and moving.

“No,” she said. “That would not be fair either. It would lower the tone of their house.”

He raised his eyebrows but made no comment.

“What is your horse’s name?‘ she asked.

“Bucephalus,” he said.

“He is a beauty.”

“Yes.”

They were quiet then until he had finished brushing the horse down, forking the old hay out of the stall and spreading fresh, feeding and watering the animal. It was surprising really. Most women of his acquaintance liked to chatter, with the notable exception of his sister Freyja. But then Freyja was an exception to almost all rules. The silence was a comfortable one. He did not feel at all self-conscious at her quiet scrutiny.

“You love horses,” she said when he was finished and leaned back against a wooden beam and crossed his arms. “You have gentle hands.”

“Do I?” He half smiled at her. “You do not love horses?”

“I have not had much to do with them,” she admitted. “I believe I am a little afraid of them.”

But before they could become more deeply involved in conversation, a stable lad appeared to inform them that the innkeeper’s wife had a pot of chocolate awaiting them in the dining room, and they made their way back across the yard, running and dodging puddles again. The rain seemed to be easing somewhat.

They sat and talked for two hours until their midday meal was ready. They talked about books they had both read and about the wars, newly over now that Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated and captured. He told her about his brothers and sisters without telling her exactly who they were. He told her about Wulfric, the eldest; about Aidan, the cavalry officer who had recently come home on leave, married, and decided to sell out; about Freyja, who had twice been almost betrothed to the same man but who had lost him to another woman last year and had been spitting mad ever since; about Alleyne, his handsome younger brother; and about Morgan, the youngest, the sister who bade fair to being lovelier than anyone had any right to be.

“Unless,” he added, “she were to have fire-gold red hair and green eyes and porcelain skin.” And the body of a goddess, he added silently. “Tell me about your family.”

She told him about her three sisters, Cassandra, older than herself, Pamela and Hilary younger, and about her younger brother, Branwell. Her parents were both still alive. Her father was a clergyman, a fact that explained why she was estranged from her family. What had impelled the daughter of a clergyman into a life of acting? He did not ask the question and she did not volunteer the information.

By the time they had finished the midday meal, the rain had eased to a light drizzle. If it were to stop within the next hour or so, the roads should be passable by tomorrow. The thought was somewhat depressing. The day seemed to be going far too fast.

“What is there to do for amusement in this town?” he asked the landlady when she came to remove their dishes— they had been deemed far too important for the services of the maid, it seemed. That wench was busy serving a few townsmen their ale in the adjoining taproom.

“There isn’t nothing much on a day like this,” she said, straightening up, setting her hands on her hips, and squinting in concentration. “It’s not market day. There is just the church, which isn’t nothing much as churches go.”

“Any shops?” he asked.

“Well, there is the general shop across the green,” she said, brightening, “and the milliner’s next to it and the blacksmith’s next to that. Not that you would have any need of his services.”

“We will try the general shop and the milliner’s,” he said.

“I have a mind to buy my wife a new bonnet since she ran away without one.”

Claire’s—the only one she had brought with her—had been lost inside the stagecoach, she had told him earlier.

“Oh, no!” she protested. “Really, you must not. I could not allow—”

“You take wotever he is offering, ducks,” the innkeeper’s wife said with a wink. “I daresay you earned it last night.”

“Besides which,” Rannulf said, “wives are not supposed to question how their husbands spend their money, are they?”

“Not so long as it is spent on them.” The woman laughed heartily and disappeared with the dishes.

“I cannot let you—” Claire began.

He leaned across the table and set a hand over hers. “It is altogether possible,” he said, “that every hat in the shop is an abomination. But we will go and see. I want to buy you a gift. There is no question of your having earned it. A gift is simply a gift.”

“But I do not have enough money with me to buy you one,” she said.

He raised one eyebrow and got to his feet. She was a proud woman indeed. She would drive a large number of potential protectors to madness if she were ever to descend upon any of the green rooms in London.

All the bonnets on the display at the milliner’s shop were indeed abominations. But any hope Judith had entertained about avoiding the embarrassment of having a gift bought for her was dashed when Miss Norton disappeared into the back of the shop and came out with another bonnet lifted on the back of her hand.

“This,” she said with an assessing glance at Ralph, “I have been keeping for a special customer.”

Judith fell in love with it on sight. It was a straw bonnet with a small brim and russet ribbons. About the upper side of the brim, where it joined the rest of the bonnet, was a band of silk flowers in the rich colors of autumn. It was not a fussy bonnet, nevertheless. Its simplicity was its main appeal.

“It suits madam’s coloring,” Miss Norton observed.

“Try it on,” Ralph said.

“Oh, but—”

“Try it on.”

She did so, helped by the fluttering hands of Miss Norton, who tied the wide ribbons for her to the left side of her chin and then produced a hand mirror so that Judith could see herself.

Ah, it was so very pretty. She could see her hair beneath it, both at the front and at the back. Every bonnet she had ever owned had been deliberately chosen by Mama— though with her full acquiescence—to hide as much of her carroty hair as possible.

“We will take it,” Ralph said.

“Oh, but—” She whirled around to face him.

“You will not regret it, sir,” Miss Norton said. “It complements madam’s beauty to perfection.”

“It does,” he agreed, taking a fat-looking purse out of a pocket inside his cloak. “We will take it. She will wear it.”

Judith swallowed awkwardly. A lady was simply not permitted to accept a gift from a gentleman who was not her betrothed. And even then ...

How absurd! How utterly absurd after last night to be thinking of what a lady would do. And the bonnet was prettier than anything she had owned before in her life.

“Thank you,” she said and then noticed just how many bills he was handing to Miss Norton. Judith closed her eyes, appalled, and then felt all the contradictory pleasure of being the owner of something new and expensive and lovely.

“Thank you,” she said again as they left the shop and he hoisted over their heads the large, ancient black umbrella the landlord had insisted upon lending them for their sortie across the rather boggy green between the inn and the shops. “It is terribly pretty.”

“Though quite overshadowed by its wearer,” he said. “Shall we see what the general shop has to offer?”

It had a little bit of almost everything to offer, most of the wares cheap and garish and in execrable taste.

But they looked at everything, their heads bent together, stifling their laughter at a few of the more hideous items. Then the shopkeeper engaged Rannulf in a discussion of the weather, which was beginning to clear up at last. The sun would be shining by the morning, the shopkeeper predicted.

Judith took her purse out of her reticule and hastily counted up her coins. Yes, there was just enough.

She would have to hope that the stagecoach tomorrow would get her to her aunt’s without any more delays, for there would be nothing left for any refreshments. But she did not care about that. She picked a small snuffbox off a shelf and took it to the counter. They had laughed at it because it had a particularly ugly carving of a pig’s head on the lid. She paid for it while Ralph was wrestling the umbrella tightly closed since they would have no need of it on the return journey across the green.

She gave him the gift outside the shop doors, and he opened the paper that had been wrapped around it and laughed.

“This is the measure of your esteem for me?” he asked her.

“May you remember me every time you enjoy a good sneeze,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, opening his cloak and placing the snuffbox carefully into his pocket, “I will remember you, Claire. But I will treasure your gift. Did you spend your very last coin on it?”

“No, of course not,” she assured him.

“Liar.” He drew her arm through his. “It is halfway through the afternoon, and boredom has not yet driven us to bed. But I believe it is about to. Will we find our time there tedious, do you suppose? ”

“No,” she said feeling suddenly breathless.

“That is my feeling too,” he said. “The landlord and his good lady have been feeding us well. We will somehow have to build up an appetite to do justice to the dinner they are doubtless preparing for us. Can you think of a way we can do that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Only one?” He clucked his tongue.

She smiled. She felt pretty in her new bonnet, her gift to him was lying in his pocket, and they were on their way back to the inn to go to bed again. There was all the rest of the afternoon left, and there was all night ahead of them. She would make it an eternity.

She glanced up at the sky, but already there were breaks in the clouds and blue sky showing through.

She would not look. There were hours left yet before morning came.