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‘Oh, this?’ He chuckled as he flexed his bruised hands. ‘This was the start of my adventure, actually. I’d gone up to Manchester to deal with a...ah...a situation that had come to my attention. I was on my way...er...to meet someone and report back when I...’ He looked a bit sheepish. ‘Well, to be perfectly honest I took a wrong turning. That’s why I ended up at that benighted inn last night. So Hugo couldn’t have done it!’ He slapped the table. ‘Of course he couldn’t.’ He smiled at her. ‘Well, that’s a relief. I shan’t have to hold him to account for what has happened to you. I don’t think I could have forgiven him this.’
His smile faded. He gave her a look she couldn’t interpret, then glared balefully at his empty tankard.
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to take you to the place where I’ve arranged to meet him. Straight away.’
She wasn’t at all sure she liked the sound of that.
‘Excuse me, but I’m not convinced that is the right thing to do.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ He looked completely stunned. ‘Why should you not wish to go there?’
‘I know nothing about it, that’s why.’ And precious little about him, except that he had recently been in a fight and was being downright shifty about what it had been about.
Oh, yes—and she knew what he looked like naked.
‘It is a very comfortable property in which a relative of mine lives,’ he snapped. ‘A sort of aunt.’
She gave an involuntary shiver.
‘You need not be afraid of her. Well...’ He rubbed his nose with his thumb. ‘I suppose some people do find her impossible, but she won’t behave the way your aunt did—I can promise you that.’
‘I would rather,’ she said tartly, ‘not have anything to do with any sort of aunt—particularly one you freely admit is impossible.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he said firmly, ‘she can provide you with clean clothes, and we will both enjoy good food and comfortable beds. In rooms that nobody will invade,’ he said with a sort of muted anger, ‘the way they did at The Bull. And then, once we are rested and recovered, I can contact people who will be able to get to the bottom of the crime being perpetrated against you.’
‘Will you? I mean...thank you very much,’ she added doubtfully.
If he really did mean to take her to the home of a female relative who lived in some comfort, even if she was a touch difficult to get on with, and contact people on her behalf to right the wrongs done her, then it was the best thing she could think of.
It was just that coming from a man with a black eye and bruised knuckles it sounded a bit too good to be true.
He shot her a piercing glance. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I am sorry,’ she said, a touch defiantly. ‘But I am having trouble believing anything that has happened today. But if you say you mean to help me, then I shall...’ She paused, because she’d been brought up to be very truthful. ‘I shall try to believe you mean it.’
‘Of course I mean it. Your guardians picked the wrong man to use as their dupe when they deposited you in my bed. I will make them rue the day they attempted to cross swords with me.’ He flexed his bruised, grazed hands.
‘Did you make them rue the day as well?’
She’d blurted out the question before she’d even known she was wondering about it. She looked up at him in trepidation. Only to discover he was smiling. True, it wasn’t what she’d call a very nice sort of smile. In fact it looked more like the kind of expression she imagined a fox would have after devastating a henhouse.
‘Yes, I made a whole lot of people sorry yesterday,’ he said.
She swallowed. Reached for the teapot.
Something about the way she poured her second cup of tea must have betrayed her misgivings, because his satisfied smile froze.
‘I don’t generally go about getting into brawls, if that’s what you’re afraid of,’ he said.
‘I’m not afraid.’
He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you were. Look...’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’ll tell you what happened, and why it happened, and then you can judge for yourself.’
She shrugged one shoulder, as if she didn’t care, and took a sip of her tea. This time, thankfully, it had much more flavour.
‘It started with a letter from a man who worked in a...a manufactory. In it he described a lot of double-dealing, as well as some very unsavoury behaviour towards the female mill workers by the foreman, and he asked the owner of the mill whether he could bear having such things going on in his name. He couldn’t,’ he said, with a decisive lift to his chin. ‘And so I went to see if I could get evidence of the wrongdoing, and find a way to put a stop to it.’
