Housemaid Heiress. Elizabeth Beacon

      ‘Now then, children, I’m not up to playing referee,’ a weak voice chided from the floor where the sufferer lay.

      ‘The devil—how long have you been awake?’

      ‘Long enough, Marco, long enough.’

      ‘You always had peculiar ideas of entertainment.’

      ‘I hail from a peculiar family.’

      ‘And are commonly considered the pinnacle of our eccentricity.’

      ‘I don’t usually waste time interrogating pretty girls in the middle of the night, so I could argue with that, were I feeling up to it.’

      ‘No doubt you soon will be, so if you will excuse us, Miss Smith?’

      ‘You’ll come if I scream?’

      ‘Trust me,’ he said with a rueful smile that did something to her heartbeat.

      Dazed, Thea went out into the night without her usual feeling of dread dogging her every step. She doubted Granby’s thugs would be a match for her tall rifleman and his fearsome artillery, so at least tonight she was unlikely to be captured and forced up the aisle.

      Murmuring soft endearments to reassure the nervous black charger, she carefully untied his reins. The stream ran only yards from the back of the hut and she knew Marcus would never have sent her out here if he thought there was the faintest degree of danger, but he was not to know what devils stalked her footsteps.

      She caught herself thinking that, if only some of the lords Grandfather lured to Hardy House had been more like him, she might have wed before Granby’s mother realised what an opportunity was going a-begging. Anyway, the Major wasn’t a lord, so there was no earthly reason why he should want to marry her. If she did not wed a titled man, her fortune would be tied up so tightly only her grandchildren would receive more than a pittance.

      Now her reputation was so comprehensively ruined, no self-respecting gentleman would marry Miss Alethea Hardy, and she instinctively knew Major Ashfield was one of those. All she could hope for was to stay out of the Winfordes’ reach until her twenty-first birthday, then live in obscurity on her hundred a year. It was so much less than her once-grand expectations that she almost sat down and cried.

      By the time she had repeated the process of gently leading a horse to water and letting him drink with Hercules, she was resolved to be on her way as soon as dawn lightened the way.

      

      ‘I was beginning to think you a figment of my fevered imagination,’ Nick joked weakly when she crept through the ill-fitting door at last.

      ‘Funny, I hoped I was having a nightmare,’ she replied, wondering crossly why his darkly romantic looks had no effect on her silly heartbeat.

      ‘I like your waif, Marcus.’

      ‘You liked every pretty female you ever set eyes on.’

      ‘Well, they like me,’ he replied smugly.

      Thea chuckled and got a penetrating stare from his cousin that she met with proud contempt, in case he thought her susceptible.

      ‘Will the Captain be fit to ride tomorrow?’ she asked at last.

      ‘He wasn’t fit today, but that didn’t stop him.’

      ‘You’ll be on your way at first light, then?’

      Marcus frowned. ‘I shall be, but I hope you’ll stay while I fetch our cousin’s carriage to take him to Rosecombe.’

      ‘To the Park?’

      ‘Yes, do you know it?’

      ‘I saw it on my way,’ she said casually, trying not to sound wistful.

      From the road she had caught a glimpse of the beautiful neo-classical mansion through still-bare trees and thought it everything she could never have. Elegance and harmony, she thought now, and the protection of a loving family. These two men were inside that family, and she could not keep a twist of bitterness from her lips.

      ‘You dislike the aristocracy?’

      ‘No, I just wish they’d give me a job in one of their grand houses, but no respectable family employs a vagrant maid.’

      ‘Oddest vagrant I ever set eyes on,’ Nick observed faintly from his makeshift mattress.

      ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, go to sleep,’ his loving relative ordered sharply.

      ‘Don’t see how I can with you gossiping.’

      ‘I’m going out, so I suggest you recruit your strength. Lydia won’t be best pleased with you as it is, without working yourself into a high fever.’

      ‘No, the little darling will no doubt give me the scold of my life.’

      ‘Then get some sleep, instead of fantasising over Cousin Ned’s wife.’

      ‘Got to be fresh tomorrow to greet the flower of the regiment,’ Nick said irrepressibly and closed his eyes at last.

      After a few minutes they heard his breathing deepen and knew he was genuinely asleep at last. Marcus put a finger to his lips and quit the room with a significant nod at his patient.

      Did he think she would make a bolt for the open road in the middle of the night then? Thea tried hard not to feel insulted. It seemed that the rifleman’s trust was hard won, and she wanted it for some reason. Which was ridiculous, she decided, stoking the fire from a dwindling reserve of logs before she sat against the wall next to the primitive fireplace.

      The rifleman’s bedroll was under his cousin along with his own. Their cloaks lay over him, with Thea’s cherished blanket, but she didn’t expect to sleep. It wouldn’t hurt her or the Major to pass the night in a draughty shed, but their patient was a very different matter. She focused her tired eyes on the pallid oval of his sleeping face. She was supposed to be watching him, not thinking about his arrogant cousin.

      

      Hours later, Thea felt someone shake her gently and came awake, panic stark in her startled face. Gracious! She was leaning confidingly against Marcus Ashfield’s mighty torso. No, she had snuggled into his warmth like a shameless hussy in her lover’s arms. Thea tried to put as much space as possible between them and her hair promptly fell out of the knot held in place by her diminishing supply of hairpins.

      ‘If you have a particle of sense you’ll hold still, if you don’t want to make me into the rogue you seem determined to cast me as,’ Marcus gritted as if an armful of bedraggled woman fighting sleep represented limitless temptation.

      Finally realising her dishevelled state, she flushed and shook her head to try and clear it of the nonsense his coming upon her last night seemed to have stuffed it with, and felt her heavy locks fan out in an untidy cloak that threatened to enmesh them both.

      ‘Why?’ she managed to whisper at last, nodding at his scandalously positioned arms.

      ‘For warmth,’ he said abruptly and her heart sank ridiculously.

      ‘Of course,’ she mumbled and rubbed sleepy eyes before stretching against his muscular chest, feeling a terrible temptation to rub up against him like a luxuriating cat.

      ‘I could not have you catch your death, Miss Smith.’

      ‘No, I would be for ever on your conscience, I suppose.’

      ‘I think you could be anyway,’ he replied with a sombre look and Thea’s heart plummeted; she didn’t want to be numbered among an officer’s obligations, especially not his.

      ‘I’m an independent woman,’ she informed him crossly and felt him chuckle through the warm connection of their still-entwined bodies.

      ‘You’re a penniless runaway,’ he corrected and the growing daylight revealed that his grey eyes were shot through with hot silver sparks she should definitely be