Page 58 of How To Tempt A Bodyguard

"I know." She pressed her face into his shoulder, breathing him in. "I know, Matthew."

They stood like that for a long time, wrapped in each other, while the stars wheeled overhead and the night grew cold around them.

"Seven days," she murmured finally.

"We’ll make it."

He pulled back to look at her. His eyes were bright in the darkness, fierce and determined.

"Yes," she said. "We will."

When he led her inside, to the small room Nell had prepared for them, Florence let herself hope that maybe there was a future for them.

Chapter sixteen

Becoming a Peasant

Florence

The dress itched.

Nell's spare gown was rough wool, patched at the elbows, smelling faintly of woodsmoke and lye soap. Florence had worn silk against her skin for so long she'd forgotten what common cloth felt like. Now she remembered.

It felt like survival.

The wagon rattled along a rutted track, every jolt traveling up her spine. Florence let her knees fall apart beneath her skirts. Let her shoulders round forward. Let her spine curve into a slouch.

Matthew sat beside her, holding the reins loosely, his broad shoulders hunched beneath a labourer’s coat that strained across his back. He hadn't shaved in four days. The dark stubble had thickened into the beginnings of a proper beard, making him look rougher. Meaner. Less like a bodyguard and more like the prize fighter he'd once been.

They'd abandoned the two decoy trunks with nothing of value somewhere along the road. The two trunks with her belongings were left with Jack and Nell. The most critical evidence now filled two leather satchels, each heavy enough to make her shoulders ache when she carried them. Ledgers. Letters. Signed testimonies.

Twenty pounds of paper, perhaps more. It didn't sound like much until you'd hauled it across northern England on foot and wagon.

She shifted on the hard bench, feeling the satchel wedged between her feet. Matthew's was under the seat behind him, within arm's reach. They never let them out of sight. Never let them out of touch.

"Stop fidgeting," Matthew said without looking at her. "You look nervous."

"I am nervous."

"Don't be. Nervous draws attention. You're a labourer’s wife. You've spent your whole life on roads like this. This is boring to you."

She forced her hands to still in her lap. Looked down at them, red and raw now, deliberately roughened with lye and work over the past few days at Nell's cottage. She'd scrubbed floors, hauled water, kneaded bread until her palms blistered. The blisters had opened and hardened. Calluses were forming.

Her face was bare, her skin weathered by wind and sun. She'd rubbed ash into the hollows of her cheeks. Her hair was stuffed beneath a grimy kerchief.

She looked nothing like Lady Florence or Madam tansley.

"There won't be any villages until we reach the Scottish border," Matthew said after a long stretch of silence. "Nothing but farmland and moors between here and there."

"Where will we sleep?"

"Abandoned barns if we're lucky. Hospitable folks if we're luckier." He glanced at her. "You ever slept in a barn?"

"Once. During a rescue near Leeds. The hay was full of mice."

"Get used to it."

She sighed. "Delightful."