At midday the coach stopped at an inn where a new team would be put to, in preparation for the next stretch of road. Groaning in relief at the prospect of a brief respite, the passengers poured out of the vehicle and into the tavern.
Catherine carried her tapestry carpetbag, afraid to leave it in the coach. The bag was a weighty affair containing a nightgown, undergarments and stockings, an assortment of combs and pins and a hairbrush, a shawl, and a voluminous novel with a mischievous inscription from Beatrix … “This story is guaranteed to entertain Miss Marks without improving her in the least! With love from the incorrigible B.H.”
The inn appeared moderately well appointed but hardly luxurious, the kind of place that stablemen and workingmen frequented. Catherine glanced disconsolately at a wooden yard wall covered with posting bills, and turned to watch a pair of ostlers change the team.
She nearly dropped the carpetbag at the side of the carriage yard as she felt a rustle of independent movement within. Not as if something had shifted around … it was more like … something was alive in there.
Her heartbeat became rapid and disorganized, like the bobbing of small potatoes in boiling water. “Oh no,” she whispered. Turning to face the wall, trying desperately to keep the bag out of view, she unlooped the fastener and opened the bag a mere two inches.
A sleek little head popped out. Catherine was aghast to behold a familiar pair of bright eyes and a set of twitching whiskers.
“Dodger,” she whispered. The ferret chattered happily, the corners of his mouth curling in his perpetual ferret smile. “Oh, you naughty boy!” He must have slipped into the bag while she had been packing. “What am I to do with you?” she asked in despair. Pushing his head back down into the bag, she stroked him to keep him quiet. There was no choice but to take the dratted creature all the way to London, and give him into Poppy’s keeping until he could be returned to Beatrix.
As soon as one of the ostlers shouted, “All ready!” Catherine went back into the coach and settled the carpetbag at her feet. Opening the top once more, she peeked at Dodger, who was coiled in the folds of her nightgown. “Be quiet,” she said sternly. “And don’t cause trouble.”
“I beg your pardon?” came the matron’s voice as she entered the carriage, her hat plume trembling with indignation.
“Oh, ma’am, I wasn’t speaking to you,” Catherine said hastily. “I was … lecturing myself.”
“Indeed.” The woman’s eyes narrowed as she plopped into the opposite seat.
Catherine sat stiffly. She waited for a telltale rustling of the carpetbag or a betraying noise. However, Dodger remained quiet.
The matron closed her eyes and lowered her chin to the high, mounded shelf of her bosom. In a matter of two minutes, she appeared to be dozing again.
Perhaps this wouldn’t be difficult after all, Catherine thought. If the woman remained asleep, and the gentlemen resumed their newspaper reading, she might be able to smuggle Dodger to London unnoticed.
But just as Catherine allowed herself to teeter on the brink of hope, the entire situation went tumbling out of her control.
Without warning Dodger poked his head out, surveyed his interesting new surroundings, and slithered from the bag. Catherine’s lips parted in a silent cry, and she froze with her hands arrested in midair. The ferret ran up the upholstered seat to the matron’s beckoning hat. A nibble or two, and his sharp teeth had severed a cluster of artificial cherries from the hat. Triumphantly he scrambled down the seat and leaped into Catherine’s lap with his prize. He did a happy ferret war dance, a series of hops and wriggles.
“No,” Catherine whispered, grabbing the cherries from him and trying to shove him back into the carpetbag.
Dodger protested, squeaking and chattering.
The woman spluttered and blinked, waking irritably at the noise. “Wha … what…”
Cat went still, her pulse thundering in her ears.
Dodger streaked up around Cat’s neck and hung limply, playing dead.
Like a scarf, Cat thought, struggling to repress a burst of demented giggles.
The matron’s indignant gaze arrowed to the bunch of cherries in her lap. “Why … why, those are from my hat, aren’t they? Were you attempting to steal those while I was napping?”
Catherine sobered immediately. “No, oh no, it was an accident. I’m so—”
“You ruined it, and this was my best hat, it cost two pounds and six! Give it back to me at—” But she broke off with a strangled sound, her mouth rounding into a calcified O as Dodger leaped to Catherine’s lap, seized the cherries, and disappeared into the safety of the carpetbag.
The woman screamed with earsplitting force, exiting the coach in a full-rigged tumult of skirts.
Five minutes later, Catherine and the carpetbag had been unceremoniously ejected from the coach. She stood at the verge of the carriage yard, assaulted by a concurrence of strong smells: dung, horses, urine, combining queasily with scents of cooked meat and hot bread coming from the tavern.
The coachman mounted to the box, ignoring Catherine’s outraged protests.
“But I paid to go all the way to London!” she cried.
“You paid for one passenger, not two. Two passengers get half the journey.”
Incredulously Catherine looked from his stony expression to the carpetbag in her hand. “This is not a passenger!”
“We’re a quarter hour behind time because of you and your rat,” the coachman said, squaring his elbows and cracking the whip.
“He’s not my rat, he’s … wait, how am I to get to London?”
One of the ostlers replied implacably as the coach set out. “Next mails come tomorrow morning, miss. Maybe they’ll let you and your pet ride up top.”
Catherine glared at him. “I don’t want to ride up top, I paid to ride inside, all the way to London, and I consider this a form of larceny! What am I to do until tomorrow morning?”
The ostler, a young man with a long-handled mustache, shrugged. “You might ask if there’s a room available,” he suggested. “Although they probably won’t take kindly to guests with rats.” He looked beyond her as another vehicle came into the yard. “Out of the way, miss, or you’ll get thrown down by the carriage.”
Infuriated, Catherine stomped to the entrance of the inn. She looked into her carpetbag, where Dodger was playing with the cherries. Was it not enough, she thought in frustration, that she’d just had to leave a life she had loved, that she’d been through an entire night of nearly ceaseless crying and was now exhausted? Why had an unkind fate also seen fit to deposit Dodger in her care? “You,” she fumed aloud, “are the last feather that broke the horse’s back. You have plagued me for years, and stolen all my garters, and—”
“Pardon,” came a polite voice.
Catherine looked up with a scowl. In the next moment she swayed, her balance momentarily off.
Her thunderstruck eyes beheld Leo, Lord Ramsay, who looked amused. He kept his hands tucked in his pockets as he approached her in a relaxed stride. “I’m sure I shouldn’t ask. But why are you shouting at your luggage?”
Despite the negligence of his manner, his gaze went over her thoroughly, taking careful inventory.
The sight of him had knocked the breath from her. He was so handsome, so beloved and familiar, that Catherine was nearly overcome by the impulse to fling herself at him. She couldn’t fathom why he had come after her.
How she wished he hadn’t.
Fumbling to close the carpetbag, she decided that it probably wouldn’t do to advertise Dodger’s presence before she managed to secure a room for herself. “Why are you here, my lord?” she asked unsteadily.
A leisurely shrug. “When I awakened this morning after a mere four and a half hours of sleep, I thought it would be just the thing to hop in the carriage and go for a picturesque drive to Haslemere and visit the”—Leo paused to glance at the sign above the door—“Spread Eagle Inn. What a fortuitous name.” His lips twitched at her bewildered expression, but his eyes were warm. His hand came up to her face, gently lifting her unwilling chin. “Your eyes are swollen.”
“Travel dust,” Catherine said with difficulty, swallowing hard at the sweetness of his touch. She wanted to push her chin harder against his hand, like a cat hungry to be stroked. Her eyes stung with the portent of tears.
This would not do. Her reaction to him was nothing short of appalling. And if they stood out in the carriage yard even a moment longer, she would lose her composure altogether.
“Did you have difficulty with the coach?” he asked.
“Yes, and there won’t be another till morning. I need to arrange for a room.”
He wouldn’t release her from his gaze. “You could come back to Hampshire with me.”
The suggestion was more devastating than Leo could have known.
“No, I can’t. I’m going to London, to see my brother.”
“And after that?”
“After that, I’ll probably travel.”
“Travel?”
“Yes, I’ll … I’ll tour the Continent. And settle in France or Italy.”
“By yourself?” Leo didn’t bother to hide his skepticism.
“I’ll hire a companion.”
“You can’t hire a companion, you are a companion.”
“I’ve just left the position,” she shot back.
For just a moment, there was an alarming intensity in his gaze. Something predatory. Something dangerous. “I have a new position for you,” he said, and a little chill went down her spine.
“No, thank you.”
“You haven’t heard it yet.”
“I don’t need to.” Blindly she turned and walked into the building.
Finding the innkeeper’s table, she waited resolutely until a short, stocky man came to greet her. Although his head was shiny and bald, he had a thick gray beard and muttonchop sideburns. “May I help you?” he asked, looking from Catherine to the man just behind her.
Leo spoke before she could say a word. “I’d like to arrange a room for my wife and myself.”
His wife? Catherine twisted to give him an offended glance. “I want my own room. And I’m not—”
“She doesn’t, really.” Leo smiled at the innkeeper, the rueful, commiserating smile of one put-upon man to another. “A marital squabble. She’s cross because I won’t let her mother visit us.”
“Ahhh…” The innkeeper made an ominous sound and bent to write in the registry book. “Don’t give in, sir. They never leave when they say they will. When my mother-in-law visits, the mice throw themselves at the cat, begging to be eaten. Your name?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Hathaway.”
“But—” Catherine began, nettled. She broke off as she felt the carpetbag quiver in her grasp. Dodger wanted to get out. She had to keep him hidden until they were safely upstairs. “All right,” she said shortly. “Let’s hurry.”
Leo smiled. “Eager to make up after our quarrel, darling?”
She gave him a look that should have slayed him on the spot.
To Catherine’s fidgety impatience, it took another ten minutes for the arrangements to be made, including securing lodging for Leo’s driver and footman. Moreover, Leo’s luggage—two sizable traveling bags—had to be brought in. “I thought I might not reach you until London,” Leo said, having the grace to look slightly sheepish.
“Why did you arrange for only one room?” she whispered sharply.
“Because you’re not safe by yourself. You need me for protection.”
She glared at him. “You’re the one I need protection from!”
They were shown to a tidy but sparsely furnished room, with a brass bed in need of polishing, and a faded, much-laundered quilt. Two chairs were poised by the tiny hearth, one upholstered, the other small and bare. A battered washstand occupied one corner, a small table in another. The floor was swept and the white-painted walls were vacant except for a framed work consisting of a motto embroidered on heavy perforated paper: “Time and tide wait for no man.”
Mercifully there was a lack of strong odor in the room, only a slight whiff of roasted meat from the tavern below, and an ashy tang from the cold hearth.
After Leo had closed the door, Catherine set her carpetbag on the floor and opened it.
Dodger’s head emerged and did a complete swivel as he surveyed the room. He leaped out and scurried beneath the bed.
“You brought Dodger with you?” Leo asked blankly.
“Not voluntarily.”
“I see. Is that why you were forced off the coach?”
Glancing at him, Catherine felt her insides rearrange themselves, a warm lifting and resettling as she saw him remove his coat and cravat. Everything about the situation was improper, and yet propriety no longer seemed to matter.
She told him the story then, about the rustling in the bag, and how the ferret had stolen the cherries off the matron’s hat, and by the time she got to the part about Dodger pretending to be a scarf around her neck, Leo was gasping with laughter. He looked so thoroughly tickled, so boyish in his amusement, that Catherine didn’t care if it was at her expense or not. She even laughed with him, breaking into helpless giggles.
But somehow her giggling dissolved into sobs, and she felt her eyes welling even as she laughed, and she put her hands over her face to hold the giddy emotions back. Impossible. She knew she looked like a madwoman, laughing and crying all at once. This kind of emotional unhinging was her worst nightmare.
“I’m sorry,” she choked, shaking her head, covering her eyes with a sleeved forearm. “Please leave. Please.”
But Leo’s arms went around her. He collected the quivering bundle of her against his hard chest, and he held her firmly. She felt him kiss the hot, exposed curve of her ear. The scent of his shaving soap drifted to her nostrils, the masculine fragrance comforting and familiar. She didn’t realize that she had continued to gasp out the word “sorry” until he answered, his voice low and infinitely tender. “Yes, you should be sorry … but not for crying. Only for leaving me without a word.”
“I l-left a letter,” she protested.
“That maudlin note? Surely you didn’t think that would be enough to keep me from coming after you. Hush, now. I’m here, and you’re safe, and I’m not letting go. I’m here.” She realized that she was struggling to press closer to him, trying to fight her way deeper into his embrace.