He doubted she could poach an egg. He had spoken of beef pie as if it might be something she had never even heard of. Ha! How she would love to deal him his comeuppance. And she would too. She had amused her father and everyone else in his household by spending hours in the kitchen, watching their cook and helping her whenever she had been allowed to. It had always seemed to her a marvelously relaxing way of using her spare time.

She examined a loaf of bread that she found in the pantry and discovered that though it was not fresh enough to be eaten as it was, it would be appetizing enough if toasted. And there was a wedge of cheese that someone had had the forethought to cover, with the result that it looked perfectly edible. There was a slab of butter on another covered dish.

She sent Wally outside to the pump to fetch some water, filled the kettle, and set it to boil. It would take some time, she estimated, since the fire was only now crackling to life, but it would be worth waiting for. In the meanwhile, there was probably enough ale in the inn to slake the thirsts of four men. Indeed, it was her guess that Wally had consumed little else in the time since he had been left alone at the inn. Certainly there was no sign of any dishes having been used or any food handled. And he had probably done nothing else but stay warm in his bed, too lazy even to light a fire for comfort.

Mr. Marshall was in the taproom when Frances went back in there. A fire now burned in the hearth, making the room look altogether more cheerful, though nothing could save it from ugliness, and he was in the process of moving a table and chairs closer to the fire. He straightened up to look at her.

He had removed his greatcoat and hat since she last saw him, and she almost stood and gaped. That he was a large gentleman she had seen from the first. She had also thought of him as a heavyset gentleman. But she could see, now that he stood before her, clad in an expertly tailored coat of dark green superfine with fawn waistcoat and pantaloons and dry Hessian boots with white shirt and neatly tied cravat, that he was not heavyset at all but merely broad with muscles in all the right places. His powerful thighs suggested that he was a man who spent a great deal of time in the saddle. And his hair without the beaver hat looked thicker and curlier than she had imagined. It hugged his head in a short, neat style.

He was a veritable Corinthian, in fact.

Indeed he was nothing short of devastatingly gorgeous, Frances thought resentfully, remembering fleetingly all the amusement she felt every time she overheard the girls at school giggling and sighing soulfully over some young buck who had taken their fancy.

Yet here she stood, gawking.

Nasty gentlemen, she thought, deserved to be ugly.

She moved forward to set the tray down on the table.

“It is only teatime,” she said, “though I suppose you missed luncheon as I did. The kitchen fire will be hot enough for me to make a cooked meal for dinner, but in the meanwhile toast and cheese and some pickles will have to suffice. I have set some out on the kitchen table for the men too and have sent Wally running to the stables to fetch Thomas and your coachman.”

“If Wally is capable of running,” he said, rubbing his hands together and eyeing the tray hungrily, “I will eat my hat as well as the toast and cheese.”

Frances had dithered in the kitchen about whether to join Mr. Marshall in the taproom or stay there for her own tea. Her inclination was very much to stay in the kitchen, but her pride told her that if she did that she would be setting a precedent and putting herself firmly in the servant class. He would doubtless be content to treat her accordingly. She might be a schoolteacher, but she was no one’s servant—certainly not his.

And so here she was, alone in an inn taproom with Mr. Lucius Marshall, bad-tempered and arrogant and handsome and very male. It was enough to give any gently reared young lady the vapors.

She finally removed her cloak and bonnet and set them down on a wooden settle. She would have liked to comb her hair, but her portmanteau and reticule had disappeared from inside the door, she could see. She smoothed her hands over her hair instead and seated herself at the table that had been pulled forward.

“Ah, warmth,” she said, feeling the heat of the fire as she had not yet done in the kitchen, where the fireplace was much larger and slower to heat. “How positively delicious.”

He had seated himself opposite her and was regarding her with narrowed eyes.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You are Spanish? Italian? Greek?”

“English,” she said firmly. “But I did have an Italian mother. Unfortunately I never knew her. She died when I was a baby. But I daresay I do resemble her. My father always said I did.”

“Past tense?” he said.

“Yes.”

He was still looking at her. She found his gaze disconcerting, but she was certainly not going to show him that. She set some food on her plate and took a bite out of a slice of toast.

“The tea will be a while yet,” she said. “But I daresay you would prefer ale anyway. Perhaps you can find some in here without having to disturb poor Wally again. He has had a busy afternoon.”

“But if there is one thing he is good at and even enthusiastic over,” he said, “it is the liquor. He has already given me a guided tour of the shelves behind the counter over there.”

“Ah,” she said.

“And I have already sampled some of the offerings,” he added.

She did not deign to reply. She ate more toast.

“There are four rooms upstairs,” he said, “or five if one counts the large empty room, which I assume is the village Assembly Room. One of the smaller rooms apparently belongs to the absent Parker and his missus of the formidable tongue, and one is a mere box room with a single piece of furniture that may or may not be a bed. I did not sit or lie on it to find out. The other two rooms may be described in loose terms as guest chambers. I purloined sheets and other bedding from the large chest outside the landlady’s room and made up the two beds. I have put your things in the larger of the rooms. Later this evening, if Wally can keep awake so long, I will have him light the fire in there so that you may retire in some comfort.”

“You have made the beds?” It was Frances’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “That would have been something to behold.”

“You have a wicked tongue, Miss Allard,” he said. “I might have seen a mouse or two setting up house beneath your bed, but doubtless you will contrive to sleep the sleep of the just tonight anyway.”

And then suddenly, looking across the table at him, trying to think of some suitably tart rejoinder, she was assaulted, just as if someone had planted a fist into her stomach, with a strong dose of reality. Unless the absent landlord—and, more to the point, the landlady—arrived home within the next few hours, she was going to be sleeping here tonight quite unchaperoned in a room close to that of Mr. Lucius Marshall, who was horribly attractive even if he was also just plain horrible.

She lowered her head and got to her feet, pushing out her chair with the backs of her knees as she did so.

“I will go and see if the kettle is boiling yet,” she said.

“What, Miss Allard?” he said. “You are allowing me the final word?”

She was indeed.

As she hurried off into the kitchen, her cheeks felt suddenly hot enough to boil a kettle apiece.

It was the damnedest thing, Lucius thought when he was left alone, getting to his feet and going in pursuit of more ale.

She was clad quite hideously in a brown dress a few shades lighter than her cloak. It was high-waisted, high-necked, and long-sleeved and about as sexless as dresses came. It draped a tall figure that was slender almost to the point of thinness. It was a figure that was as unvoluptuous as figures came. Her hair was much as he had expected it would look when she still wore her bonnet. It was dressed in a purely no-nonsense style, parted ruthlessly down the middle, drawn smoothly back at the sides, and coiled in a simple knot at the nape of her neck. Even allowing for the flattening effect of a bonnet, he did not believe she had even tried this morning to soften the style with any little curls or ringlets to tease the masculine imagination. The hair was dark brown, even possibly black. Her face was long and narrow, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a nondescript mouth. Her eyes were dark and thick-lashed.

She looked prim and dowdy. She looked—and behaved—like the quintessential governess.

But he had been dead wrong about her, nevertheless.

For some reason that he had not yet fathomed—and it had to be the sum of the whole rather than any of the individual parts themselves—Miss Frances Allard was plain gorgeous.