Page 47 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“I need a few words with Miss Selby.” He used his iciest, most commanding tones. “You may wake her and then take yourself off.” Rummaging through his pockets, he found another coin and held it out to her.
“Really?” the woman said. “Seriously?”
It took his mind a few moments to catch up with his eyes. “Robin?” He retrieved his spectacles from his pocket and put them on. “Why are you wearing that cap?” That seemed a safer topic than falling to his knees and thanking God she was alive.
“You.” She rose to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at him. “You are nothing but an arrogant, overbearing bastard.”
All true. All irrelevant. He opened his mouth to say as much, but she cut him off.
“If you had any kind of relationship with your brother, he might have known you didn’t have designs on Louisa. And if you weren’t such a bloody ogre, the pair of them wouldn’t have thought you capable of forcing girls into marriage in the first place.”
She sounded to be in fighting form, so that was something to be thankful for. “I gather I’m the villain in this piece.”
“As far as I can tell, the pair of idiots thought you meant to persuade me or blackmail me into forcing her hand. Aunt Agatha drugged me with laudanum—”
“What!” he roared. The idea of Robin being poisoned like a character in one of those dratted novels made his blood positively boil.
“Shh. You’ll wake Louisa.” She paused and stared at him. “You’re wet. Did it start raining again?”
“Only the pleasantest drizzle, just the thing to add some excitement to the business of chasing my loved ones over hill and dale. Robin, my dear, I could point out that in the melodrama you’ve regaled me with, you play a role as well. But you’ve had a trying day and I don’t want to be tedious.”
She had been fiddling with the edge of her cap, and now gave up and tore it off entirely. Alistair nearly sighed with relief to see her looking recognizable, albeit furious.
“If you think I engineered this elopement, you’re an even greater fool than I had thought.” Her hands were on her hips and her face was flushed with anger.
“That notion hadn’t even occurred to me.” He saw that she was pulling at her skirt, as if trying to make it behave. “Why are you wearing those clothes, though?”
She narrowed her eyes. “So I can nurse Louisa, obviously.”
He hadn’t thought of that. “How is she?” He should have asked that immediately, but in the scope of today’s events, Louisa’s welfare ranked low. It mattered to Robin, though, and presumably to Gilbert as well, so it meant something to him in a roundabout, secondhand sort of way.
“She has a head wound, but she was awake and sensible when the doctor was here. Frankly, I think she only swooned when she saw your brother’s arm, not due to her own injury. Gilbert is fine. After his arm was set, he insisted on spending the night at the doctor’s house so Louisa wouldn’t be compromised.”
“Good God, he might have thought of that before actually eloping with her.”
She cracked a tired smile at that. “Are you spending the night at the inn and then returning to London with Gilbert in the morning?”
“Are you certain you didn’t suffer a blow to the head as well, Robin? If you imagine that my brother would abandon his wounded lady love and return to London, you have a very unfair notion of Gilbert. He’ll haunt this house day and night, bringing posies and generally making a nuisance of himself. And I will stay here as long as he does. That way this adventure can pass as a family holiday, rather than an interrupted elopement.”
“You don’t need to—”
“You’re quite right that I don’t. But it’s the only way I can salvage this situation without coming out looking like a fool.” More importantly, he wasn’t leaving Robin here in this mud-soaked backwater to fend for herself.
She narrowed her eyes. “Very intriguing! I recall us having a conversation only yesterday in which you failed to understand that an imprudent marriage might be cause for embarrassment.”
“This is sophistry, Robin. Gilbert is not making an imprudent marriage.” This was a lie. Marrying the penniless daughter of a minor country squire was emphatically imprudent for a man in Gilbert’s position, even when the girl hadn’t aided and abetted a felony. But that was hardly a point Alistair could concede, given his recent matrimonial efforts. “It’s the elopement, not the match, that I take issue with. Elopements have a way of making objects of ridicule out of the people who are being eloped from, as it were.” He looked pointedly at her.
“True.” She sniffed.
“What name did you give these people?” He needed to know how to address her when they weren’t alone.
She shot him a withering glance. “Charity Church, of course.”
There was noof courseabout it. For all he knew, she had a stable filled with alternate names she trotted out as the spirit moved her, but he wasn’t going to needle her about that when she looked so exhausted. “Very well.” There was plenty of time for him to sort this out, to sift through her secrets and her stories. He stepped forward and took her hands in his. “Try to rest. I know you won’t sleep, but at least rest.” She looked up at him, her anger gone, nothing but weariness left.
After giving her hands a parting squeeze, he put his wet, ruined hat back on his wet, cold head and began the muddy return trip to the inn.
Strange surroundings, fatigue, the lingering effects of Aunt Agatha’s evil-tasting sleeping draught, and the boneless lethargy that comes after fear all combined to give the day an air of unreality. If Charity had suddenly found herself in her bed in London—or even at Fenshawe, or in a workhouse for that matter—she would hardly have been surprised.
