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‘That termagant,’ she replied acidly, ‘happens to be my mother’s sister.’
‘You have my sincere condolences.’
‘She isn’t usually so—’ She flared up, only to subside almost at once. ‘Actually, that’s not true. Aunt Charity has never been exactly easy to get along with. I did my best. Well, at least at first I did my best,’ she confessed. ‘But eventually I realised that she was never going to be able to warm to me so it didn’t seem worth the effort.’
‘Why should she not warm to you?’
He looked surprised. As though there was no earthly reason why someone shouldn’t warm to her. Did that mean he had?
‘It was all to do with the way Mama ran off with Papa. The disgrace of it. I was the result of that disgrace. A constant reminder of it. Particularly while my father was still alive.’
‘He sent you back to your mother’s family while he was still alive?’
‘Well, not deliberately. I mean...’ Oh, why was it so hard to explain things clearly? She screwed up her face in concentration, determined to deliver the facts in a logical manner, without getting sidetracked. ‘First of all Mama died. And Papa said that the army was no place for a girl my age without a mother to protect her. I was getting on for twelve, you see.’
‘I do see,’ he grunted.
‘Yes... Well, he thought his family would take me in. Only they wouldn’t. They were as angry over him marrying a girl who “smelled of the shop” as Grandpapa Biddlestone was that his daughter had run off with a sinner. So they sent me north. At least Mama’s family took responsibility for me. Even though they did it grudgingly. Besides, by then Aunt Charity had also angered Grandpapa Biddlestone over her own choice of husband. Or at least the way he’d turned out. Even though he was of the Methodist persuasion he was, apparently, “a perpetual backslider”. Though that is neither here nor there. Not any more.’
‘By which you mean what?’
‘He’d been dead for years before I even reached England. I cannot think why I mentioned him at all.’
‘Nor can I believe I just said, By which you mean what.’
‘It doesn’t matter that your speech isn’t very elegant,’ she said consolingly. ‘I knew what you meant.’
The sort of snorting noise he made in response was very expressive, if not very polite.
‘Well anyway, Grandpapa decided I should live with Aunt Charity until my father could make alternative arrangements for me, since she was a woman and I was of an age to need female guidance. Or that was what he said. She told me that Grandpapa didn’t want the bother of raising a girl child who couldn’t be of any use to him in his business.’
‘And why didn’t your father make those alternative arrangements?’
‘Because he died as well. Only a couple of years later.’
‘That makes no more sense than what I originally thought,’ he said in disgust.
‘What did you originally think?’
‘Never mind that,’ he said tersely. ‘I need to concentrate on the traffic now that we’re approaching Tadburne. This wretched animal—’ he indicated the horse ‘—seems to wish to challenge anything coming in the other direction, and I need to keep my wits about me—what little I appear to have remaining this morning—if you don’t want to get pitched into the road.’
She could understand that. She’d already noted that he was having increasing difficulty managing his horse the nearer they drew to the town she could see nestling in the next valley.
‘However,’ he said, ‘I should like you to consider a few things.’
‘What things?’
‘Well, firstly, why would your own aunt—your own flesh and blood—drug you, undress you, and deposit you in my bed? And, worse, abandon you in that inn after removing all your possessions, leaving you completely at the mercy of strangers? Because, Miss Prudence Carstairs, since you deny having any knowledge of Hugo and you seem to me to be a truthful person, then I feel almost sure that is what happened.’
Chapter Four
‘You are wrong,’ Prudence said. ‘Aunt Charity is a pillar of the community. Positively steeped in good works. She couldn’t have done anything like that.’
Though why could she recall nothing after drinking that warm milk?
He made no answer.
It must have been because he was negotiating a tricky turn before going under the archway of an inn. The inn was, moreover, right on a busy crossroads, so that traffic seemed to be coming at them from all directions. It was concentration that had put the frown between his brows and made his mouth pull into an uncompromising line.
