The Black Sheep's Return. Elizabeth Beacon

but she managed to raise herself from the feather mattress long enough to feel pain in her ankle and blisters on her feet and flinched when he undid her sash and the side-lacing of her gown, then stripped her once-fine sprigged-muslin gown off in one neat and practised swish that reminded her he had a little girl upstairs he evidently tended himself.

      ‘Have you other wounds you didn’t tell me about?’ he asked as she slumped back on the temptingly comfortable bed.

      ‘No,’ she said and had to stop herself tumbling back and falling asleep in front of him.

      ‘Then stand up as best you can and I’ll pull back the covers so you can finally lie down and rest,’ he ordered abruptly.

      ‘Yes, Papa,’ she murmured defiantly, but did as he said, trying not to notice that a hot shiver threatened to streak through her as he reached round her scantily clad person to do so.

      ‘Believe me, I don’t feel in the least bit fatherly towards you at the moment, Perdita,’ he warned gruffly.

      Without visible effort he lifted her on to the clean cotton sheet covering the mattress before drawing the bedclothes over her and tucking her in as if it was far safer to have her covered up and neatly pinned into her bed for the night. Sighing with bliss at the feel of clean sheets and a comfortable bed, she opened her eyes long enough to mutter a thank you before tumbling headlong into unconsciousness between one word and the next.

      ‘You’re welcome, my lady,’ Rich whispered as he watched the strain leave her face and sleep smooth her features into someone softer and younger than she tried to pretend she was when awake.

      Shaking his head at the contrariness of fate in bringing her to his door in such a state he couldn’t turn her away, he gestured to Atlas to come outside once more and relieve himself before they both settled down for the night. Reassured that his guest would hardly wake if a battalion of Boney’s soldiers began manoeuvres in his vegetable garden, he waited for Atlas in the cool of the late spring evening and tried to forget he had just put a very adult woman to bed in the corner of his living room and he couldn’t fairly be rid of her until she was strong enough to walk away.

      If tonight was anything to go by, he would be raving mad by the end of the week that ankle probably needed for her to be able to put it to the ground for long without pain. He felt raw with unwanted longings, bewildered by the animal need he felt for a female he probably wouldn’t even have liked if he’d met her as humble woodsman to her regal lady of high birth and position. The beast in any man could sometimes shock him, but his seemed to have taken on a life of its own tonight, even though he’d thought his Annabelle had tamed it and spoilt him for any other woman while she was about it.

      Urges were there to be controlled, he assured himself, and his high-born waif had been through far too much to suffer from his, even if he wanted her to. He would offer her shelter, food and warmth until she was well, then he would set her back on her way with a huge sigh of relief. A week with a woman he wanted but couldn’t have seemed like a lifetime at the moment, but Rich sighed morosely, whistled Atlas back inside and stole upstairs as quietly as a thief in the night. Closing the door of his narrow bedroom on the world and trying to sleep after a long day working hard, caring for his children and rescuing grumpy young ladies from their own folly, he tossed and turned until exhaustion finally overtook him and all the occupants of the isolated cottage deep in Longborough Forest finally slept.

      ‘Is she going to sleep for a hundred years like the princess in the forest?’ a shrill little whisper sounded so close to Freya’s ear that she felt as if she was swimming from fathoms’ depth of sleep to meet it coming the other way.

      ‘Of course not, silly, that’s a fairytale,’ a slightly less shrill, but still very young voice replied scornfully. ‘She’s probably dead.’

      She wondered if the second child might be right for a fleeting second as she tried to make sense of an unfamiliar bed and a world she’d forgotten to be terrified of while lost in slumber. The throbbing pain in her ankle, half-a-dozen lesser ones and the stiffness of her aching limbs made her feel half a century older than she was, but informed her she was alive and suffering for all the things she’d done yesterday to stay that way.

      ‘Is not so, she just blinked.’

      Freya felt the second child’s breath on her cheek as he, for somehow she thought he sounded like a boy, stood on tiptoe to peer at her inquisitively, as if he rather hoped she might be his first real dead body and his sister was imagining that movement. Forcing open eyes heavy with sleep, she met the boy’s brilliantly blue eyes at very close range and wondered if she might be in heaven after all. At first glance he could have sat for a cherub on an altarpiece; a second look showed the mischief and verve in his bright blue eyes and told her a very human boy was gazing at her as if he’d never seen anyone quite so odd.

      ‘Move,’ the tot at his side ordered and swatted him with the carved dog in her hand with such vigour Freya winced on his behalf. ‘I can’t see,’ the little girl explained as if it justified anything she must do to change that sad state of affairs.

      ‘I’ll put Pod in the bonfire next time we have one and burn him to cinders,’ the boy said as he rubbed his bruises and tried to grab her weapon.

      ‘No, you won’t, you won’t, you won’t,’ the furious little girl ordered at the top of her voice and seemed about to bellow herself into a storm of tears at the very idea.

      ‘I thought I told you two limbs of Satan to let the lady sleep,’ Freya’s rescuer of the night before interrupted what might well be an inexhaustible tantrum, given the way the tot had screwed up her face and seemed about to settle into a fine dramatic performance.

      ‘We did, Dada, we did,’ the little girl said with such a purposefully winsome smile Freya felt her heart melt at the sheer brass-faced audacity of her.

      ‘I dare say you did, for a whole minute after I took my eyes off you so I could take that thorn out of Atlas’s foot you said you were so upset about. Next time I shall have to leave it in, if that is what you get up to as soon as my back is turned.’

      ‘Oh, no, Papa,’ she begged and real emotion in her clear green eyes revealed what a fine little actress she was the rest of the time.

      ‘No, for I wouldn’t let a kind and decent animal like Atlas suffer for the misdeeds of a naughty little girl and her big brother, both of whom are old enough to know better.’

      ‘We wanted to see if she was dead or not,’ her brother said earnestly.

      ‘As you woke her up to find out, you now know otherwise and may say your best hello, then beg the lady’s pardon,’ the now clean-shaven and disturbingly attractive Orlando said as coldly as he could with two pairs of wide and innocent eyes gazing at him as if their owners never had a wicked thought in their lives. ‘I’m your father, don’t forget. I know you two imps were sent from Hades to plague the rest of us, so there’s no point pretending to be little angels with me. Make your curtsy, Sally, and you, young man, can give the lady your best bow for waking her when a big boy of more than five ought to do as he’s told by now.’

      ‘We’re very sorry for disturbing your rest, lady,’ the boy said with a quaint courtly bow that instantly enslaved Freya.

      ‘Sally?’ the tough little girl’s father prompted and it looked for a moment as if he might have a revolution on his hands.

      ‘We’re thorry,’ she said, as if expecting them to fall for the lisped sweetness of her false words so hard they would forget the rest.

      ‘And?’ her father prompted ruthlessly.

      Sally sighed, a long-suffering gust that said Do I really have to? A quick nod from her father told her she wasn’t going to get away without one, so she attempted a wobbly curtsy before plumping down on the floor with an annoyed huff.

      ‘I can’t do it,’ she informed them crossly and sat there with her arms folded over her chest and a furious frown on her face as if it must be someone else’s fault.

      ‘You’ll