After the disconcerting events of that particular week, Audrey had deliberately tried to banish all thought of Kirkwood and Allingham. She knew she could spend hours – no weeks! – dwelling on all the things she should have done to repel Mr. Kirkwood, but what was the point? It was done with now and she knew she would do well to focus all of her attention on putting it all behind her. She knew she was very lucky that her reputation was still intact and not just because she had not been discovered with Kirkwood. Refusing a perfectly decent earl was hardly likely to endear her to the ton and there had been a good chance that she might develop a reputation of being flighty.

So she had resolved to put all thoughts of Kirkwood out of her mind entirely. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she had encountered him unexpectedly three weeks later she might have succeeded a little better.

But she had encountered him again and she had behaved… well, she did not like to dwell on it for it was far too shaming. But she had certainly not acted as her mother would have expected a well brought up young lady to act. In fact, the whole thing was so mortifying that she herself was convinced she was not the kind of girl she’d thought she was. Somehow, Kirkwood had turned her into a completely different person than the one that stared at her from the mirror every morning, the girl that she’d thought she knew inside and out. Instead, she had transformed into somebody who behaved in a rash and foolish manner. Their second encounter had been just as disturbing as the first had been, more so because it had shattered whatever comfortable reassurances she had managed to fabricate over the preceding weeks.

‘Enough is enough,’ she had decided, after another night of troubled sleep had plagued her. ‘I will not think of this any more. I must not. I have made a foolish error of judgment – twice – but I shall make very certain that I do not make another. I just have to make sure that I do not see Kirkwood ever again and trust the whole thing fades away.’

For it must. Her future happiness depended on forgetting how it felt to be, all too briefly, held in one particular man’s arms.

After that last encounter, Audrey had taken great pains never to be alone anywhere she went, remaining resolutely at Mama’s or Isabella’s side as if attached by an invisible string. She might not be able to stop herself from searching the crowds for a tall, dark figure but if she caught herself doing so she ruthlessly turned her attention to something else.

She would get over this madness, she vowed.

But she would definitely recover all the more quickly if she did not have to see Kirkwood again.

Chapter Four

The afternoon continued to produce endless flurries of snow, much to Isabella’s annoyance. She took to pacing around the parlor until Harry made her sit beside him, slipping an arm around her. He settled her rather like one would settle a restive horse, Audrey noted ruefully, talking to her quietly and stroking her hair. After a time, Isabella closed her eyes and even seemed to doze. Millie continued to play cards, wheedling her mother and Audrey into a few hands until she had defeated them soundly as well. Then she retreated onto the window seat with a book – a quite inappropriate novel by Mrs. Radcliffe – and was heard of no more for some time. As evening approached, the snow stopped and the wind died, leaving what seemed like an unnatural hush over the small inn and amplifying the snap and crackle of the burning wood in the fireplace.

‘It’s stopped,’ Isabella murmured drowsily from against her husband’s shoulder.

‘The roads still won’t be passable, however,’ Harry observed. ‘If it remains clear tomorrow morning I will go out and investigate how bad it is. Perhaps we shall be able to get moving again in the afternoon. At the very least I might be able to take one of the horses and go home.’

‘And leave us here?’ Isabella demanded, waking up abruptly.

‘Only until I can return with a more suitable vehicle. Perhaps there is something in the stables that will move over the snow more easily than our town coach.’

‘That seems like a very sound plan,’ Eliza Hathaway said, raising her embroidery to peer at a thread and then snipping it off. A third candle had been supplied when the others had been replaced; Fumble positioning it carefully behind Lady Hathaway’s head to better illuminate matters. She had appreciated his kindness for, even with a set of eyeglasses perched on the end of her nose; the fine stitches were proving to be a challenge in the gloom. ‘If we are to depend on the town carriage we might still be here for several days, but if Harry can bring the phaeton back we might just manage it. And at the very least, he can establish just how far we are from home. I know we have travelled this road innumerable times but I simply cannot recall The Drunken Maiden.’

‘That’s because we’ve never thought to stop here. Why would we when we’re so close to home?’ Harry observed.

‘If it is not very far to Little Paddocks, perhaps I could ride there with Harry and get some people to come back for you,’ Millie suggested eagerly. She was not used to such close confinement and the lack of space in the inn meant that there was little to absorb her energy.

‘We shall see,’ her mother said noncommittally. ‘It all depends on the weather.’

‘We don’t want to lose you and a perfectly good horse in a snow drift,’ Audrey pointed out with mock gravity. ‘You’re not very big. It would be hard to find you.’

‘As if I’d ride into a ditch,’ the youngest Miss Hathaway said scornfully. ‘Although if I were allowed to wear trousers more often it would be a great deal easier.’

This was a common refrain as Millie had taken to wearing trousers in the privacy of the Carstairs’ estate if she was off exploring the woods and gardens and, after a time, her nearest and dearest had more or less grown accustomed to it. The only stipulation her mother had placed on this bizarre behavior was that Millie must either wear a gown if they were likely to have callers, or disappear so that she was not seen. Millie had readily accepted these terms although she had opted, more often than not, for the invisible option, as she did not care to make polite conversation with callers.

Her mother and sister were saved the necessity of replying to this by the sound of somebody pounding on a door. It was not on the door of the parlor but on the front door of the inn itself. They all paused, taken aback by the sound.

‘Somebody else, caught by the weather?’ Isabella said quizzically.

‘I hope it is not a crowd,’ Millie grimaced. ‘This is not a very big parlor, is it?’

‘If it’s one of the locals they will undoubtedly want to use the public taproom instead of sharing the fire with us,’ Harry said reassuringly.

‘Then let us hope it is one of the local people,’ his wife said ruefully, ‘for we are taking up all of the chairs but two.’

They could hear the heavy footsteps of Mr. Fumble hurrying to open the front door and the creak of badly oiled hinges, then the murmur of voices. All of the room’s occupants strained to hear what was being said. A woman’s voice and the low rumble of a man’s, along with the reassuring baritone of Mr. Fumble himself. Not a lot could be heard apart from the occasional word like, ‘storm’ and ‘fierce bad weather’, along with ‘other guests’. Isabella and Audrey exchanged glances.

‘It might even be one of our neighbors from Little Paddocks,’ Isabella suggested. ‘Caught out by the weather like ourselves.’

‘Well it won’t be so awkward if we know them, I daresay,’ Audrey returned, although that rather depended on the neighbor. Some of them could be dreadfully tedious. Bad enough to be trapped in one place by a snowstorm but even worse, surely, to have to share a small space with people one did not want to engage with.