Destitute On His Doorstep. Helen Dickson

looked mercilessly down into hers. Almost immediately his hands released her arm and closed over her shoulders, thrusting her away. Suddenly and unexpectedly he laughed.

      ‘You appear to be remarkably quick with your hands, Mistress Lucas. I can see I must not underestimate you. You might well have been a match for my fellow soldiers. So much for the popular conception of gently bred young ladies being raised like tender plants given to swooning and the vapours.’

      The bright colour flamed in Jane’s cheeks once more and she bent and retrieved her whip, trying to ignore the pain in her wrist. ‘If I am angry, sir, it is because I suddenly find my home, which has belonged to the Lucas family for generations, has been stolen.’ She was also feeling increasingly unwell. Her headache was definitely getting worse and she was so hot and thirsty.

      He laughed again in the face of her anger. ‘Of course, I should be delighted to have you remain as my guest—until you have found somewhere else to go. Do you have relatives hereabouts?’

      Jane was dumbstruck. And so it was that she looked at the Roundhead Colonel with new eyes. And because it happened so unexpectedly, leaving no time to prepare herself, she experienced a sudden, terrible sense of loss and loneliness so that, for a moment, she found she could not speak. As she went on looking at him in disbelief, almost unseeing, she felt her heart gradually begin to pound, and all the tensions she had been trying so hard to control building up inside her until they came together in a tight knot at the base of her throat. She’d had moments of dejection before, but they had never been so serious. This was a bitter blow.