Page 66 of A Problem Princess

“Thank you.” With a polite nod, Clayton scooped up the bundle and made his way to Cordelia.

She didn’t see him approach, too infatuated with the children to notice. He should have been angry about that, too. She needed to be more aware of her surroundings. But knowing the reason, he didn’t blame her.

“Let’s go, Jane,” he called down to her and extended his hand to help her to her feet. “We’re leaving.”

Disappointment darkened her face, but she nodded and took his hand to rise. She glanced back to smile at the children and their mother as he led her toward the door.

“Do you think they’ll be all right?” she asked, worried. “They haven’t been able to find passage to London yet.” She stopped and placed her hand pleadingly on his bicep. “Can’t we do something to help them?”

Guilt pricked him. So did the overwhelming desire to please her. “Stay here.”

He hurried back to the innkeeper and nodded at the mother and her children.

“Make certain they have beds, hot water, and plenty of good food while they’re waiting,” Clayton ordered the innkeeper and tossed him another coin. At this rate, he’d be out of money by nightfall. “And when one’s free, put her into a post chaise to take her to London.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Make certain you do it,” Clayton warned, his eyes boring into the innkeeper’s. “I’m coming back this way in a few days, and if I find out you’ve mistreated her or cheated me of my coin, there will be hell to pay. Understand?”

The man nodded emphatically and gestured for a barmaid to wait on the mother. “You’ve nothing to worry about, sir.”

Clayton gave a sharp nod and returned to Cordelia to lead her outside into the innyard and the waiting stagecoach. He helped her up into the compartment.

Cordelia stopped in the tiny doorway and turned back to him. “Sometimes, you’re just…” She let her shoulders fall, at a loss for words. “Wonderful.”

“Well, don’t tell anyone,” he grumbled, that small compliment warming him through. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

Then he helped her into her seat on the wide bench and stepped into the compartment after her.

They were joined by four others inside the crowded compartment, and as the coach rolled away from the inn and across the countryside toward the coast, he breathed a sigh of relief. They couldn’t speak privately in the coach, so she couldn’t ask him questions he didn’t want to answer. Or give him the chance to undress her again, and this time not stop at her stays.

Within a few minutes inside the warm, rocking carriage, Cordelia fell asleep. She was exhausted from the events of the past few days and slumped trustingly against his side.

He slipped his arm around her. She sighed gently in her sleep and nestled against him, and the ache in his gut took his breath away. He would do anything to protect her.

Even from himself.

Twenty

“There,” Clayton announced as they arrived at the last cottage on the bluff above the village.

Cordelia nodded, never so happy to see a tiny, old cottage in her life. They’d traveled nearly nonstop since leaving London that morning, which now seemed like days ago, and crossed the causeway just as the tide had turned and was rising once more to cover it and cut off the island from the mainland. The bell in the village church tower had rung ten times as they’d arrived at the inn and stepped down from the coach. The last stretch on foot through the village and out to Madame Noir’s cottage had nearly undone her, and with her ankle still sore but usable and her entire body drooping with fatigue, she didn’t think she could travel another minute.

But if she was tired, then Clayton must have been purely exhausted. Yet he didn’t show an ounce of it as he led her to the cottage in the glow of the small lantern he’d purchased at the village inn to light their way and unlocked the door.

He led her inside, then released her arm and locked the door securely behind them. He held up the lantern to take a good look at the cottage. “This will do.”

Unease rose inside her. He didn’t mean how comfortable the little sitting room looked with its settee and overstuffed chair, the thick rug in front of the hearth, or the paintings of flowers decorating the wattle-and-daub walls. No, he meant the thickness of the door and the solidity of the locked shutters, which would make defending the place easier in case another attack came.

“No one could have followed us here,” he assured her as if reading her worried mind. “We covered our tracks too well.”

She nodded slowly. She trusted him to protect her life, if not her heart.

He took a spill from the vase on the fireplace mantel and knelt to start a fire. “No one will suspect a princess is hiding here.”

Perhaps not. And this cottage wouldn’t be such a bad little place to hide, she decided. True, it was shuttered up tight and currently cold and dark, but it looked inviting despite that, with a main room downstairs serving as both sitting room and kitchen and a set of stairs leading up to what she assumed was a bedroom tucked beneath the eaves.

“But we still need to be wary.” He lit the splinter of wood in the lantern, then held it to the nest of kindling already laid in the fireplace. “We shouldn’t stay here for more than a couple of days.”