“Do you want me to hold it for you?” she asked before she could think. Why she was offering she had no idea, after the awful things he’d said last night.
He looked at her, his eyebrows raised as if he was surprised as well. “Yes.” His voice was gruff. “Please.”
“Erm.” She cleared her suddenly dry throat. “If you’ll just turn around for a moment?”
He stilled, watching her, then nodded abruptly and presented his broad back to her.
She inhaled and scrambled in the covers to find the shawl she’d been wearing the night before. It was tangled near her feet and she drew it out and wrapped it securely about herself before crawling over and sitting on the side of the bed, her bare feet dangling over the edge.
She picked up the mirror and sat very straight. “You can turn back now.”
He pivoted to face her and then took a step closer. He was only inches away and she felt her lips part as he gazed at her, his eyes dark green and stormy. He looked almost…angry, but surely that couldn’t be right. She was helping him.
Abruptly he picked up the razor again and she started at his movement.
He frowned. “Hold the mirror a little higher. And angle it like…” He wrapped his big hand around her fingers and she nearly had to close her eyes at the heat. He positioned the mirror to his satisfaction before letting go of her hand. “There.”
Mr. Mortimer leaned toward her, peering in the mirror, and made another swipe across his high cheekbone.
Hippolyta held the mirror just under her chin. She swallowed, trying to control her breathing. He was studying the mirror and his reflection, not her. But her body didn’t seem to understand the difference. It just registered the proximity, the scent of man and his sandalwood-scented soap, the little line between his brows as he peered from side to side.
“You missed a spot,” she said, horrified to realize her voice was rusty.
His gaze darted up to hers, green like new leaves, and his brows rose.
She cleared her throat again. “Just there.” She touched a place near his right ear, his skin warm and soft, and then hastily snatched her hand away again.
He nodded and scraped the last bit of his whiskers away. Then he bent and splashed water on his face before snatching up a cloth to dry his face and turning away. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome.” Belatedly she lowered the mirror, feeling foolish.
But he was already striding to the chair holding the rest of his clothes.
He shrugged on his waistcoat and coat and then fished a handful of hairpins out of his coat pocket. “I got these off one of the innkeeper’s daughters last night. For your hair.” He laid the pins on the table. “I’ve already ordered a meal to be packed for our journey. Get dressed and we’ll leave at once.” He glanced at her, his brows lowered. “Don’t forget Tommy.”
He shouldered his bag and was out the door.
Hippolyta stuck out her tongue at the closed door just because she could. Rude, nasty man.
But she did want to continue their journey as soon as possible, so she scrambled to get dressed.
Twenty minutes later she walked out into the inn yard, Tommy Teapot tucked securely under her shawl.
The sun was shining again today and she squinted a bit as she picked her way over to the waiting carriage.
Mr. Mortimer was talking to two men by the carriage, presumably their drivers, though this was the first time she’d seen them up close and in daylight.
All three men turned as she approached.
The older man took the clay pipe from his mouth. “Can we ’elp ye, ma’am?”
Mr. Mortimer made an irritable sound. “Josiah, you know her. We’ve been traveling with her for two days. This is—”
“Miss Hippolyta Royle,” Hippolyta said firmly before he could introduce her as Moll Jones or something worse.
Josiah’s eyes rounded and he snatched the battered tricorne off his graying head. “Ow. Well, I’m that pleased t’ meet ye, ma’am. In th’ light o’ day as ’twere.”
Behind him Charlie had also taken off his hat and was staring at her, openmouthed.
She smiled at them both. “I’m afraid I haven’t yet thanked you for stopping the carriage the other night. You both saved me, you know.”
Mr. Mortimer snorted, but she ignored him.
Josiah went a brick red.
Charlie looked bashful. “T’were our pleasure, ma’am. Truly.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Mr. Mortimer muttered, and pointedly opened the carriage door for her.
Hippolyta arched an eyebrow at his scowl but nodded in thanks and entered the carriage, seating herself. Mr. Mortimer closed the carriage door, but the window had been left open a crack and she could hear the voices outside.
“…right lady, she is,” Charlie said.
A rather hurtful scoff from Mr. Mortimer. “Just because she cleans up well doesn’t mean she’s a lady.”
“Nooo,” Josiah said doubtfully, “but she do carry ’erself well, and then there’s th’ accent. Proper upper crust, that.”
“An accent can be faked.”
“Oh, t’ be sure, t’ be sure,” the older man replied, sounding almost amused. “But Mattie, what ye might be wantin’ t’ ask yerself is why she’d bother t’ put on a accent not ’ers—an’ why yer so dead set she ’as.”
“Jesus,” Mr. Mortimer exclaimed. “Let’s just go.”
The carriage rocked as he entered and sat.
Hippolyta glanced at him. “Your men are quite lovely—and so polite.”
She smiled sweetly.
He merely growled as the carriage lurched into motion.
The problem was that old Josiah was right: Matthew couldn’t think why the beggar maid should be lying.
He stared at her as she unwrapped her shawl, letting Tommy uncurl himself from the folds. She scratched him under the chin with one finger and the little animal stretched, chirping at her.
Bloody flirt.
He remembered the press of soft breasts, soft arse, soft arms and legs and belly last night. He’d fallen asleep stiff and woken stiff and there hadn’t been a sodding thing he could do about it. She was going to kill him before they ever got to London.
Hell, if she kept caressing the mongoose like that, she might very well kill him before luncheon.
“You said you were born in India,” he said abruptly.
She glanced up at him, her eyes dark and mysterious pools. “Yes.”
“Where?”
“Madras.” Tommy, bored now that her attention was no longer on him, jumped down from the seat and scampered across the carriage. He placed his paws on the seat beside Matthew and sniffed the basket holding their breakfast. “My father was the son of a country vicar. His father wanted him to follow him into the church, but Papa was determined to make his fortune. He’d gone to Oxford, but instead of taking his vows he joined the East India Company as a clerk and went out to India in 1705.”
He grunted, pushing Tommy’s inquisitive nose away from the basket. These were awfully specific dates and details. He frowned as he took out a cold meat pie and handed it to her. “And your mother?”
“Thank you.” She broke off a piece of the thick piecrust and nibbled on it. “Papa met A—my mother ten years later. By then he’d moved up in the ranks of the East India Company and had done very well for himself. He says that he fell in love with Mother at first sight. I remember very little about her, except that her hands were soft and she laughed a lot. Oh, and she liked to sing.”
Mathew took a bite of his own meat pie. Very few Englishwomen went out to India. “She’s no longer alive?”
Her eyelashes hid her eyes. “She died when I was seven.” Tommy had sneaked back to her side of the carriage and she gave him a piece of her pie. “I don’t remember much of it, but I know there was a stillborn baby. She was bedridden for a time and then…” She shook her head. “She was gone.”
He said nothing, simply watching her.
Her lips curved sadly, and he was struck anew at how beautiful she was. The dark arch of her brows, the perfect oval of her face, the smooth olive of her skin, the mahogany sweep of her hair.
“Papa and I moved to Calcutta when I was eight.” Her eyes were downcast, her lashes dusky shadows on her cheeks. “The native language was different there. I didn’t understand it. Papa hired tutors for me so I could be properly taught to be a lady. It was lonely but I had Papa and my tutors and there was a courtyard with pretty songbirds in a cage. England—when we finally came to England—seemed such a strange place. So green and damp and cold. I didn’t recognize the trees or the flowers when I first arrived, but now I’ve come to understand them. I even rather like the rainy days.”
He glanced out the window at the late-autumn landscape—dark rolling hills, gray skies, the wash of rain on the horizon. England would be quite a shock after a childhood in hot, sunny India. “I’ve been cold since we landed in Edinburgh.”
“Have you?” she murmured.
He nodded, still staring out at the grim landscape, remembering hot winds, the scent of foreign spices cooking in the air. “Cold and wet.”
“Will you go back, do you think? To India?”
“No.” He shook his head decisively, looking back at her. “I’ve too many duties to tend to here.”
“Such as?” Her head was cocked inquisitively, dark eyes alert, almost like Tommy’s.
The thought amused him, but he doubted she’d like being compared to a mongoose. “My family…business is in disarray. Recently my cousin died and left it to me to repair. There are debts to be settled, dependent relatives to be cared for, bloody solicitors to consult.” He grimaced at the thought of all that awaited him in London.
“That sounds rather…awful.” She wrinkled her nose in sympathy.
He gave her a repressive glare. “Thank you. I am aware.”
She bit her lip as if suppressing a smile, the minx. “I’m sorry.” She brightened. “Perhaps you can join one of those mysterious scientific or traveling clubs gentlemen seem to adore.”
“And sit around drunkenly reminiscing about my travels in India?” He finished eating his meat pie and flicked the last couple of crumbs at Tommy, who eagerly scrambled after them. “No, thank you.”
“Then what shall you do?” she asked softly.
“My duty,” he said, flatly, and that should’ve ended the conversation there.
Of course, though, with Princess it didn’t.
“Is that all?” she protested. “But you need more than that. I mean, after a life of adventure of traveling and exploration and intellectual inquiry, it can’t be, well, good for you to just sit and do nothing but your duty, working at whatever tedious business your family does, can it? You must do something for yourself as well, surely?”
She seemed so passionate on the matter. Her eyebrows drawn together, her little hands fisted, her beautiful tits rising and falling. And her cinnabar lips parted and wet.
“What does it matter to you?” he asked, his voice much too gruff.
She blinked and sat back against the carriage cushions. “Perhaps I’m grateful that you saved me yesterday and promised to take me safely to London. Or perhaps I’m merely interested, as any Christian would be, in the health of one’s fellow man.”
He grunted in disbelief at that.
“Or,” she whispered, “perhaps, despite your abysmal temper, terrible manners, and shocking vocabulary, I…care—just a very, very tiny bit, mind—about you, Mr. Mortimer.”
Her eyes were fathomless pools and if he let himself he might fall in and drown in their mysterious depths.
On the whole it wouldn’t be a bad death.
Tommy leaped into her lap with a trill and she broke eye contact with him and glanced down.
Matthew glared at the mongoose, but she smiled secretly at the animal, stroking him under the chin. “You’ve never told me where you got him. Did you buy him from a snake charmer?”
He snorted. “Nothing so prosaic.”
She looked up, eyebrows raised. “Well, now you must tell me.”
He sighed, crossing his arms and angling his legs across the carriage. “My party was deep in the interior, near the Himalayan mountains. We’d stopped for the night in a small native village where we’d paid the local headman for the privilege of sleeping on his earthen floor and eating his wife’s stew. As it happened, a party of Dutchmen was there as well—a rival group of scientists also mapping the mountains. As the night wore on the Dutchmen brought out some dice and we got to gambling.”
“Oh, Mr. Mortimer.” Princess shook her head.
He felt his lips twitch at her pretend shock, but firmly brought his expression under control. “In my own defense there really wasn’t anything else to do. Anyway, the hour grew late, the biggest Dutchman—the leader of their expedition—was drinking deeply of the wine they carried, and losing very badly to me. But—and this is important—he refused to concede the night. Instead he put up the only thing he had remaining in his possession that he had left to lose.”
Her eyes widened and she glanced down at the mongoose, now curled around her hand, contentedly dozing. “You mean Tommy?”
“I mean Tommy,” he replied. “The next morning the Dutchmen were all gone and I was the proud owner of a brass compass, which I had no need of since I already had two; a ruby, which later turned out to be paste; a broken silver watch; and a mongoose, who enjoys eating vermin in my bed—and leaving behind the bones.”
For a moment she stared at him and then she threw back her head and laughed, full-throated and wonderful, the sound like an arrow through his heart, and he had the sudden urge to make her laugh again and again.
“Oh, poor Mr. Mortimer,” she said when she regained control. “Fooled into accepting ownership of a mongoose by a shady Dutchman.”
“It wasn’t one of my more shining moments,” he agreed, reaching in the basket for a bottle.
“No wonder you’re so suspicious of people you meet on the road.”
“Mmm.”
She hesitated and then asked shyly, “Do you believe me now, though?”
He paused in uncorking the bottle. She was looking at him, her small chin tilted proudly up.
He uncorked the bottle and drank, all the while watching her. “Does it matter, Princess?”
She blinked and then suddenly smiled, mischievous and carefree, and something in his heart seemed to squeeze and not let go. “Perhaps not.”
Chapter Seven
“I think that John is a prince in disguise,” the queen said, and the king, who had been dozing, woke with a start.
“What? What?” The king scowled. “Surely not.”
The queen gave him one of those looks. “Yes.”
“Well, I don’t know how you’ll find out,” the king retorted. “Can’t just ask him—he’ll be bound to say he is a prince whether he is or not.”
“You forget the parsnip test,” the queen replied.…
—From The Prince and the Parsnip
* * *
It was late afternoon when Hippolyta was woken from a doze by the jolt of the carriage.
She opened her eyes dazedly and realized that she was leaning against a warm male form. “What—?”
The arm holding her tightened briefly and then Mr. Mortimer drawled in a deep voice, “You looked ready to tumble onto the carriage floor.”
“Oh.” She yawned and peered out the carriage window. They seemed to be coming to a city. “Where are we?”
“Leeds,” he said. “I think we’ll stop for the night.”
She nodded, not bothering to move, though she knew she should. It was completely inappropriate for her to be lying here in Mr. Mortimer’s arms. But then it was completely inappropriate for her to’ve shared a room with him, to’ve shared a bed with him, to’ve done almost all the things she’d done in the last three days.
She found she simply didn’t care.
No one knew
who she was here. There was no need to worry about her posture, to parse her words. No one cared who she was or where she came from. It was wonderfully freeing.
And besides. She liked feeling Mr. Mortimer’s hard hot body next to hers. That admission was completely inappropriate as well. Would she even have made it a fortnight ago? She wasn’t sure. Perhaps all that had happened since had changed her in a profound and permanent way.
Or perhaps it was simply Mr. Mortimer.
The thought was disconcerting and Hippolyta pushed herself upright just as the carriage rolled to a stop.
“Wait here,” he said, getting up. “I’ll see if there’s room.”
Mr. Mortimer stepped from the carriage and shut the door behind him.
Hippolyta stared down at her hands. Leeds was nearly halfway to London—or so she thought. Eventually they would arrive home. And then? Perhaps she’d never see him again.
No.
She inhaled. No. Even if he was simply a cartographer, she would…would ask him to call on her. There. Papa had started life as the son of a vicar. He might’ve made his fortune since and been knighted, but Papa would understand coming from a humble beginning. She was nearly certain.
The carriage door opened again and Mr. Mortimer stuck his head back in. A lock of sun-streaked hair had escaped from his tie and she had an urge to push it back from his forehead. “We have a room.”
She firmly clasped her hands and beamed at him. “Oh, good. Let me just find Tommy.”
He shook his head. “Leave him for now. I’ll take you in and then come back for him.”
She stood and held out her hand.
He frowned at it and then glanced back at the inn yard. “It’s full of shit out here.”
“Then you’d best carry me.”
He eyed her, his face going blank for a moment. In a sudden swift movement, he gathered her into his arms and against his chest.
Hippolyta felt her heart trip over. She looped her arms about his neck as he turned to the inn, watching his profile. He had the beginnings of stubble on his jaw. “Will you order a bath tonight?”