suggested to him. “I suppose she’s your cousin, too.”
Christopher stared at her. “No. She’s my wife.”
Peg cackled. “Pity the young captain, then!”
“I buried him behind your inn,” Christopher said amiably, and Peg looked so worried that Deborah laughed.
*
They reached the Lion’s Head before dark, but thick clouds had formed overhead, and thunder rumbled in the distance.
They discovered Marvin at the inn’s coffee room, sitting rigidly upright in the corner. She greeted Deborah with obvious relief while looking anxiously about for Lady Bilston.
“I’m afraid I got it all wrong,” Deborah told her. “Her ladyship never left Gosmere. I have inconvenienced you for no reason. And her! However, she knows this was my fault, not yours.”
Marvin looked dismayed. “But it will be dark before I get there! In fact, how am I to get there?”
“The weather is turning filthy,” Christopher said. “If you wish, I’ll hire a chaise for you to Gosmere, but I think we are all best staying here until morning.”
Deborah glanced at him in surprise, for she had assumed they would leave their horses here and travel back in the chaise with Marvin. Which would not be terribly comfortable.
“Perhaps you are right,” Marvin said indecisively. “I would disturb the whole household arriving in the middle of the night. Do you think her ladyship will understand?”
“Of course. I shall tell her everything,” Deborah assured her.
“Then I shall bespeak bedchambers for us all,” Christopher said. “And supper!”
Deborah watched him saunter across the room, which was surprisingly busy. He was a poised and distinguished figure, and the innkeeper himself had come to meet him before he even reached the door.
Hastily, she looked away. “Have you dined?” she asked Marvin, who shook her head. “You must be even hungrier than I!”
Christopher joined them a few moments later. “We have bedchambers, but there are no private parlors free. Apparently, it is market day tomorrow. So I have asked for supper to be sent up to our chambers. The innkeeper’s wife is waiting to show us the way.”
Marvin looked relieved to be out of the public way and, no doubt, to escape Deborah and Christopher. She said goodnight with a curtsey at her chamber door, and they followed the landlady to the end of the hall, where she threw open another door.
“It’s our best bedchamber,” she said proudly, “and quite spacious as you see, so I hope you won’t feel the lack of the parlor. Your dinner won’t be long.” She curtseyed and hurried away.
Deborah’s gaze flew to her husband’s. “I thought…”
“They only had two bedchambers available. I hoped you would rather share with me than with Marvin.”
Approaching voices sounded in the passage, and Deborah hastily stepped inside the chamber. As their hostess had boasted, it was a spacious, pleasant room, with a table and two chairs in one corner, a wardrobe and almost-matching chest of drawers. The curtains were open, allowing in the last of the grey daylight and a view of the church across the square.
But there was only one large bed. Draped with heavy linen curtains, it became all that she could see.
“It is large enough for us never to find each other even if we were looking,” Christopher said dryly. “But if you wish, you can easily form an impregnable barrier of pillows and blankets.”
She flushed. “I would not dream of such a thing. I know you have no desire to change our agreement.”
His lips quirked as he regarded her from his intense blue eyes. “And how do you know that?”
“I am not unobservant, sir,” she retorted, removing her hat and placing it on top of the chest of drawers.
He set his beside it and stepped back to admire the effect, before turning his gaze back to her. “And what have you observed, wife of my bosom?”
“Your penchant for Mrs. Ireton, for one thing,” she retorted, then bit her lip, annoyed by her indiscretion. But his gentle mockery had inspired a rare spurt of temper.
“I have no penchant for Mrs. Ireton.”
Her gaze flew back to his, but a knock at the door heralded the innkeeper’s wife and servants bearing a tray of delightfully fragrant dishes. The table was speedily set with cutlery and glasses, plates, and bowls. A tureen was placed in the middle of the table with some newly baked bread and wine poured into glasses. A tray containing three further covered dishes was left on a side table.
“We thought you would prefer to serve yourselves,” the clearly over-burdened innkeeper’s wife declared, making a virtue out of necessity.
They bustled off