Page 21 of Exile's Return
Rising to her feet, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window and wondered how one threw oneself on the mercy of a total stranger looking like she did at this moment. She had been wearing her best gown to attend on the Committee and now it was covered in mud and worse.
She gave a bitter laugh. No man would want her looking as she did. Her fingers touched the locket and she wondered if Lucas would buy it from her. If not, she had no choice but to seek out a gold dealer in the morning and sell it for whatever she could raise.
She changed into clean petticoats and a respectable bodice with fresh collar and cuffs and arranged her disordered curls as best she could, washed her face again, pinched her cheeks to force some colour into her wan face, and forced herself to smile.
Drawing herself up straight she left the bedchamber, now so silent and empty without the children, and made her way back to the inn’s parlour.
Lucas—she couldn’t remember if he had told her his first name—waited for her as he said he would. He rose to his feet in a single, lithe movement and gestured at the chair across the table from him.
For a moment her nerve failed her. How could she even think about throwing herself on the mercy of a man she knew nothing about?
She supposed some women might find him handsome, with his brown hair, darkly tanned face and high cheekbones. James had been fair and, to be honest, softer. He had been starting to go to fat, not that she would have ever said anything to him. She found the hard planes of Lucas’s face and the strong mouth more than a little intimidating, and Henry was right, the scar did make him look piratical.
Outwardly though, his clothes were those of any respectable man of business. His jacket of good quality dark blue wool had been well cut in the latest fashion to set off his long, lean body. He wore the more fashionable falling bands in place of a collar and expensive lace trimmed the froth of cloth at his wrists. A man who took some pride in his appearance and had the means to purchase the best.
His grey eyes rested on her face. Something in those light depths, the colour of an icy stream, made her shiver.
Just as she considered making her apologies and fleeing to the safety of the bedchamber, he smiled, softening the cold eyes and curling those well-cut lips. Small lines creased the corners of his eyes and her moment of doubt vanished.
‘Do I meet with your approval?’
She flushed, looked down at her mournful gown, and thought of her pale and wan face. As a seductress, she had a lot to learn. Staring at your quarry like a rabbit facing a fox was probably not a good way to begin.
She cleared her throat and forced herself to look up at him again, a smile fixed on her lips. ‘I was thinking that you must have spent a great deal of time in warmer climes than ours, sir. I have never seen a man so dark.’
Lucas shrugged. ‘I have travelled extensively, Mistress Fletcher.’
‘Are you a merchant?’
Something flashed in the grey depths of his eyes. Amusement?
‘A merchant? Perhaps,’ he said with a shrug.
The more she looked at him, the more piratical he appeared for all his fine clothes. A sword hilt crowned with a jewel of deepest green winked at her, and she could have sworn from the line of his well-cut jacket that he carried a pistol tucked into his belt.
It would be madness to throw herself at the mercy of this man. What was she thinking?
She steeled herself. ‘You have been very kind. Thank you for settling my account. There was no need…I will repay you.’
His eyes creased at the corners as he smiled. ‘Of course you will, Mistress Fletcher, but for the moment you are my guest. Will you at least sit and eat with me?’
He gestured at the flagon of wine and a large pie that now took up most of the space on the tiny table. Agnes’s stomach growled in appreciation.
‘Please help yourself. The world’s troubles will seem easier on a full stomach,’ he said.
A man’s response, that, she thought. Food—the panacea to all evil.
She seated herself with all the grace she would have used at James’s table.
‘I lied,’ she said after several mouthfuls.
‘Lied?’
‘I do not have the means to repay you. I have nothing. Not a groat.’
‘I know,’ he said and leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his cold, grey eyes narrowed. ‘I am not looking for you to repay me in coin, Mistress Fletcher.’
Agnes swallowed, taking his meaning. Men — they were all the same. What choice did she have?
