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them on a stool next to the bed. ‘We will manage the best we can.’ He rolled so that his back was to her again. ‘When you are ready to retire, please extinguish the candle.’
    Once she was sure that his eyes were truly closed, Dru dropped the front of her gown and loosened the stays built into it to make sleeping a little easier. She feared that the shortness of breath she was experiencing was more the sign of rising panic. She was not even a day from home, but it was farther than she had ever travelled without escort. And on the very first night, she had fallen into what the map maker might label terra incognita , a place where the rules as she understood them did not apply. She was in bed with a strange man and both of them were barefoot. Although no governess had lectured her on this particular circumstance, she was sure that the forecast would have been dire.
    She suspected that Priss would have managed the situation much better, for the girl had been so unwilling to follow the dictates of convention that she would not feel their absence.
    But Dru missed them sorely. She must hope that the man she had hired to aid her was as honest and dependable as he managed to look, in some lights at least. Once he was rested and sober, and wearing his spectacles again, everything would be all right. She remembered the flash of gold in his eyes, after he’d removed his glasses, but just before he’d closed them. Strange, deep, unfathomable eyes. Eyes that had been places and seen things. And they had been looking at her.
    ‘Here there be dragons,’ she whispered, blew out the candle and lay down beside him.
    From somewhere on the other side of the mattress, she heard a groan, and the muttered, ‘I will slay them in the morning.’ And then, there was nothing but silence.

Chapter Four
    W hen she woke the next morning, she was stiff with discomfort and not all the pain she felt could be blamed on the stress of travelling. She had slept with her arms folded tightly across her chest, fearing that the least movement would rouse her companion.
    But he had not seemed at all bothered by her presence. His even snoring was a demonstration of that. It had roused her several times during the night. Of course, he was quiet enough now that it was almost light and time to be getting up again. She grumbled to herself at the unfairness of it, tossing to lie on her other side.
    He was silent because he was awake. Only inches from her nose he lay facing her, watching.
    And why she had thought him a parson on the previous day she had no idea. So close like this, his eyes were reminiscent of some great cat. His body reminded her of that as well, for there was a stillness in it now that did not seem so much immobility, as the gathering of energy that came, right before the pounce.
    And that attention was focused on her. Like a rabbit, she responded to it by freezing. Unable to turn away from him, she lay there, paralysed, waiting for the eventual assault, yet was unable to fear it. While she’d not thought further than the desperate effort to save her sister’s reputation, she’d put her own honour at stake. And that particular commodity was so shelf worn as to be practically useless. While it was foolish to put it at risk, she sometimes wondered if anyone even cared that she possessed it.
    But in this moment, she was sure that Mr Hendricks had noticed, was giving the matter some thought and would divest her of it with efficiency and discretion, should she ask him to.
    Then the man next to her sat up, yawned, stretched and reached for his glasses. He put them on; when he looked at her again, it was as if the great cat she feared was safely encased behind a thick, protective window. It watched her for a moment, then lost interest, retreating slowly back into its cage and out of sight, leaving the somewhat owlish parson she had noted on the previous day.
    ‘You slept well, I trust?’ he asked.
    ‘As well as can be expected,’ she