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paid for this room and mean to stay in it.’ He smiled benevolently. ‘Since you are my employer, I will hardly deny you the space, if you wish to remain with me.’
    Perfectly true and annoyingly rational. ‘Then it is I who must sleep in the stable,’ she said, doing her best to look pathetic and elicit his sympathy.
    ‘Or on the floor,’ he offered. ‘Although it does not look very comfortable. Or you can take your half of the mattress, if you will leave me in peace.’
    ‘If I leave you in peace?’ she said, outraged.
    ‘I have no intention of accosting you in the night, nor do I mean to tell anyone of the close quarters,’ he said. ‘I know my own nature and feel quite able to resist your charms.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she said, a little annoyed that at the first sign of conflict she had gone back to being her easily resistible self.
    He glanced at her, as though speculating. ‘But I cannot vouch for your motives. In our first meeting, you were the aggressor. For all I know, you are the sort of woman who forces herself on to unwary travellers and robs them of their purses, or murders them in their beds.’
    ‘How dare you.’
    Then she saw the twinkle in his eye. ‘I am properly convinced. Only a lady of the bluest blood can raise that level of outrage over so small a jest. Your honour is safe from me. And as for my honour?’ He shrugged. ‘I doubt you would know what to do with it, should you find it.’ He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots, then stripped off his coat and waistcoat and loosened his cravat.
    There was no reason that his words should hurt her, for they were true. They were not even an insult. No decent girl should have any idea how to approach a strange man in her bed. But she hated to be reminded of her ignorance and to feel that he was amusing himself with her naïveté . But it was late and she was tired, and could think of no alternative sleeping arrangements if he was unwilling to move. She stared at the bed, then at him. ‘If it is only for the few hours until dawn, I think I can manage to control myself.’
    ‘Unless you are driven wild by the appearance of a man’s bare feet,’ he said, not bothering a glance in her direction. ‘I will retain my shirt in deference to your modesty. But I mean to remove my socks and dry them by the fire.’
    ‘Is there any reason that I would be inflamed at the sight of them?’ she asked, suddenly rather curious. For other than in paintings, she could not remember ever seeing any male feet.
    ‘None that I know of. But if you wish, you may assure yourself that they are not cloven hooves.’ He pulled back the covers and she caught a glimpse of them as he rolled easily into his side of the bed. They were quite ordinary, although there was something distinctly masculine about the size.
    But being able to travel with dry toes tomorrow would be rather pleasant. So she went to her side of the bed, with her back to him, and as discretely as possible removed her boots, undid her garters and rolled her own stockings down.
    Then she glanced at the bed again, trying not to look at the body already in it. To lie down beside it would be more than a careless disregard for modesty. But she was very tired, and there might not be another chance to sleep in a bed, not even part of one, between here and the end of her journey. ‘I have, in the past, been forced to share a mattress with my sister. That did not upset my sleep.’ But Mr Hendricks seemed much larger than Priscilla. And he was occupying slightly more than half of the available space. She wondered, uneasily, how much room she was likely to need.
    He rolled so that he could look at her again as she arranged her stockings next to his. His eyes flicked briefly to her feet, bare on the cold floor of the inn, and then just as quickly back to her face. He gave her a strange, tight smile. ‘But I am not really your brother.’ Then he removed his spectacles, folded them and placed