Merely the Groom Read online

  It was Douglas, the innkeeper, and his wife.

  “What are we goin’ to do about the young lassie?” the innkeeper asked.

  “Send her packing,” Mrs. Douglas answered.

  “We canna turn her out,” Douglas protested. “We told the man we’d keep her. Besides, she hasna coin to go elsewhere.”

  “Then he should have paid more. If she has no coin, she cannot stay here.”

  “Och, Tillie...” The innkeeper sighed.

  “Well, she cannot,” Tillie protested. “So dinna start feeling sorry for the lassie.”

  Colin clamped his jaw shut against the sudden urge to join the innkeeper as he championed the young woman’s cause. He pressed his back closer against the wall, willing himself to become a part of it and remain undetected. He didn’t much care for the innkeeper’s wife, but she had taken a fancy to him. And since Colin had been sent to Edinburgh for a reason, he wouldn’t jeopardize his mission by alienating her.

  Passengers from The Diamond Princess and The Lady Dee and the other ships in the firth, routinely sought bed and board at the Blue Bottle, and someone frequenting the Blue Bottle was in league with Bonaparte and his network of spies. Colin’s mission was to find out who that someone was and stop the flow of information from England, through Scotland, and back to France. He had been tracking the source of the information for nearly a year, posing as a businessman with special interests—smuggling interests—in France. It had taken him months to become a familiar face and earn a measure of trust from the men who frequented the Blue Bottle and who worked along the Edinburgh waterfront.

  Colin needed to stay on good terms with the innkeeper and his wife. He couldn’t risk losing his room at this particular inn. Because the Blue Bottle Inn was conveniently located beside the docks, served hot food, whisky, wine, and ale, and was fairly clean, it was the favorite meeting place of the men he shadowed, and Colin knew from experience that it was easier to track his quarry if he slept where they slept, ate where they ate, drank where they drank.

  But Colin was rapidly losing patience with the innkeeper’s wife. He could never abide hard-hearted women who nagged at their husbands and children and relished pointing fingers at their shortcomings. Unfortunately, Mistress Douglas was proving herself to be that sort of woman, and that did not bode well for Colin’s future stays in Edinburgh. Or the job he’d been sent to do.

  “I canna help feeling sorry for the lassie,” Douglas argued. “She’s alone and frightened and far away from everything that’s familiar. Anyone with half an eye can see that she’s accustomed to far better than what we have to offer.”

  “She’s lucky to have a roof over her head.” Tillie gave a derisive snort. “Any roof. Even one that’s not as fine as the one she was accustomed to. She’s lucky I agreed to keep her here at such a low price. The rotter who left her won’t likely be returning any time soon. Not after getting what he came for.”

  “Aye,” Douglas murmured. “That appears to be the way of it.”

  “It’s always the way of it,” Tillie told him. “Any whore on the street can tell you that”

  “Her eyes are always red and swollen. No doubt her puir heart is broken.” The innkeeper made a sympathetic clucking sound.

  “You’ve always had a kind heart,” his wife told him. “That’s why we never have enough coin to keep us in a comfortable old age. You’re always taking in strays and giving our hard-earned gold away.”

  Douglas bristled. “The stray cats I took in earned their keep. And I won’t be comfortable in my old age knowing we took tainted gold from a man we knew was up to no good.”

  “I only took the gold because I feared he’d smother her in her sleep and leave her body here and us to answer for the killing.” She looked at her husband.

  “We’ll be lucky if he doesna come back and smother all of us in our sleep. You took his money, Tillie, and promised to watch the girl. You made us his accomplices. He no doubt thinks he paid you enough to make certain the girl stayed put. And what’s more, he probably thinks he purchased our loyalty.”

  “My loyalty costs a lot more than he was willing to pay,” she said. “I ain’t going to smother her. But I don’t intend to keep her on charity, either. If she stays here, the young lass will have to earn her keep,” his wife pronounced. “And we’ve plenty of dishes she can wash and floors she can scrub.”

  “You’ve grown hard, Matilda,” Douglas replied. “The Bible says that we should help the needy.”

  “That’s all well and good so long as ye don’t fall for every hard-luck story that comes along.”

  “I never gave a brass farthing to anyone who didn’t need it worse than we did.” The innkeeper sighed. “I think she knows he’s not coming back for her, but she waits at the window just the same. Every time I take her tray, she asks if her husband has returned. It breaks my heart. She’s such a pretty thing. What if the young lady were our little lassie?”

  “If she were our little lassie, she would’ve known better than to run away with a pretty fellow who’d abandon her to the mercy of strangers.”

  “Weel,” Douglas drawled. “Since she’s already been abandoned to the mercy of strangers, the least we can do is show her some.”

  “You be merciful,” Tillie told him. “I’ll make certain she earns her bed and board.”

  And I’ll make certain she doesn’t have to, Colin vowed, suddenly fiercely determined to thwart the innkeeper’s wife and rush to the aid of the unknown lass who waited at the window, watching for the return of her errant spouse.

  He smiled a satisfied smile as he formulated a plan of action. He’d have to be a bit more frugal with his remaining coin and provide a full accounting of where it went to Jarrod when he returned to London, but it was a small price to pay to save a lady from the humiliation of having to perform manual labor in order to appease the innkeeper’s wife. It would be a noble sacrifice, and noble sacrifices appealed to Colin’s sense of chivalry.

  He was, after all, a hero—albeit a shadowy, anonymous one. But a hero just the same, and every hero understood that doing his duty involved sacrificing his comfort for the good of someone else. Especially when that someone else was a damsel in distress.

  Colin remained concealed until the sound of their voices grew less distinct, signaling the fact that the innkeeper and his wife had left the kitchen and moved to the inn’s common room. He couldn’t see what they were doing, but the rattle of pewter and cutlery against wood, the scraping of iron over stone, told Colin that Douglas and Mistress Douglas were busy attending to their morning chores: stacking pewter plates on the sideboard, laying out the mugs and utensils in preparation for breakfast, and stirring the coals banked in the massive hearth, coaxing them into a roaring flame.

  He released the breath he’d been holding and quietly eased out of his hiding place. In order to reach the stairway that led to the upstairs sleeping rooms and the comfort of his rented bed, Colin would have to pass through the common room, and he hadn’t a prayer of crossing it without Douglas or Mistress Douglas seeing him. Unless he entered the Blue Bottle in the same manner in which he’d exited without being detected last evening.

  Heaving a weary, inaudible sigh, Colin retraced his steps. Carefully unlatching the kitchen door, he slipped over the threshold and into the morning mist.

  The air was heavier than it had been when he entered. Colin used the fog to his advantage, hugging the stone outer wall of the inn as he made his way from the back entrance to the Blue Bottle to the small laundry that adjoined it.

  Colin had learned on one of his previous stays at the Blue Bottle that the window of his bedchamber overlooked the roof of the laundry. He’d decided upon first glance that the roof and the inn’s narrow ledge could be used as something more than a roosting spot for pigeons. They provided an ideal means of coming and going undetected, provided one was agile or foolhardy enough to pull oneself onto the laundry roof and then up onto the narrow stone window ledge in the dark of night.
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br />   Colin was agile enough, having first gained the necessary skill and stealth at Knightsguild, and having subsequently added years of practice in pursuit of pleasure and in the service of his country.

  When Jarrod had recruited Colin for this particular line of work, he had reminded him that sneaking in and out of windows in the dead of night was one of his specialties—as a good many society ladies could attest.

  Jarrod was right. Sneak thief work was one of the things he did best, but that didn’t mean he found it palatable. Climbing through windows had never been Colin’s preferred mode of entrance. Years of practice had made it possible for him to conquer his fear of heights, but with age came wisdom and the healthy sense of fear with which he’d been born.

  In the past few months he’d begun to realize that skulking about dark alleys, frequenting unsavory establishments, climbing in and out of upper-floor windows had lost a great deal of its allure. And climbing in and out of the window of the Blue Bottle Inn was no exception. It was a long way from the second floor window to the cobblestones below, and Colin had suddenly realized that he was in no hurry to meet his maker or test the flames of hell.

  All things considered, he’d rather have taken the stairs.

  But he’d lost that option when he’d lingered a bit too long in the alley, staring up at the woman in the window. He wondered how she’d feel if he slipped into her bedchamber instead of his own and offered to watch over her and keep her warm for the night, wondered suddenly if she would watch for him at the window when he left, the way she watched for her errant husband.

  For there was no question that Colin would leave. He always left. His life was one long, dangerous mission after another. He left on assignments and never looked back, never wondered what it would be like to stay. Never wondered what he was missing. Never wondered if anyone regretted his leaving.

  His work didn’t allow for such luxuries, and Colin hadn’t allowed himself to dwell upon it. Not since that long-ago day when he’d discovered his betrothal contract had been broken, and Esme Kelverton was lost to him forever. If any of the women he’d left behind had ever watched for him the way the woman in window watched for her loved one, Colin wasn’t aware of it. And if the truth were known, he’d always liked it that way. He was, after all, a Free Fellow, and Free Fellows didn’t give any thought to sentimentality. Until now…

  Chapter Three

  “O what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!”

  —William Shakespeare, 1564-1616

  Measure for Measure

  Gillian stood at the window, shivering in the cold and damp long after the man in the black cloak moved out of her line of view. She leaned closer, staring down at the street below, wondering suddenly where the man in the black cloak had gone.

  He’d been there one minute, then vanished into the fog the next. Gillian almost doubted she’d seen him at all. But the quickening of her pulse when she’d caught sight of the tall figure in the morning mist told her there was no reason to doubt her vision. He had been there. She hadn’t imagined him. She hadn’t been jumping at shadows.

  Gillian exhaled, and her breath frosted the thick glass, obscuring her vision even more. Pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders, she swiped the end of it against the windowpane in the vain attempt to bring the alley below into sharper focus.

  But for what purpose?

  She had been staring out of this window for days. Waiting and watching in vain.

  Her pulse might have raced at the sight of him, but the man in the alley wasn’t the man she’d hoped to see. Because the man in the alley wasn’t her husband.

  Her husband. Gillian straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin a notch higher, and sighed. She, who had never done an impulsive thing in her life, had eloped with a dashing stranger—a hero—a spy—one of the brave, shadowy figures who slipped in and out of France and the Peninsula in order to help England win the war against Bonaparte. She still wasn’t quite able to believe it.

  She was married. Frowning, Gillian glanced down at the third finger of her left hand. Where there should have been a ring, there was nothing. Her finger was bare. Her husband hadn’t sealed their vows with a ring. In his haste to whisk her off to Scotland, he’d forgotten the ring. He’d assured her that he had a gold band for her and a family betrothal ring to go with it, but she would have to wait until they returned to England to take possession of it. He’d assured her that the absence of a wedding band didn’t change the fact that she was married. Or the fact that she was no longer the innocent Miss Gillian Davies.

  The marriage bed and the intimate acts that went on beneath the covers of it were no longer a mystery. They had proven to be more than a bit disappointing, but they were no longer a mystery. Gillian shuddered at the memory. Her loss of innocence had been embarrassing, messy, and painful. But mercifully brief.

  It had also been incredibly lonely. She had thought that the act would be one of sharing, when the two would become one. But she’d experienced none of the closeness, none of the sharing she’d expected. After the embarrassingly intimate act, she’d felt alone, lonely and ill used, and she’d lain wide awake battling tears of frustration and disappointment as she listened to him sleep. If she were completely honest with herself, she had to admit that although she’d loved the romance and the stolen kisses she and Colin had shared during their secret trysts in London, the intimate acts of the marriage bed had been a colossal disappointment. But she supposed that was the way of it for married women. And she was Mrs. Colin Fox. She had been for over a week.

  She’d been married nine days, six of which she had spent alone. Her husband—her bridegroom—the man who had swept her off her feet and romanced her all the way to Gretna Green, had left her alone in a cold, cramped room in a less-than-reputable inn, far from the border on the Edinburgh waterfront, and although Gillian was relieved that she hadn’t had to endure a repeat of the marriage bed, she was very much afraid of being left alone, and she was very much afraid that he wasn’t coming back.

  Biting her bottom lip to keep her teeth from chattering, Gillian leaned her head against the windowpane and sighed, watching as her breath coated the glass once again. She hadn’t liked the things he’d done to her beneath the bed covers, but she had liked him. Even loved him. He had been quite dashing and a wonderfully romantic companion—right up until he’d relieved her of her maidenhead.

  She wasn’t sure if her misgivings about the marriage had begun at that very moment, but sometime between her romantic elopement and the loss of her maidenhead, Gillian had begun to have severe doubts about Colin and reservations about their future.

  She discovered, upon losing her virginity, that she was married to a stranger. Colin changed so much in that brief time that Gillian barely recognized him. It was almost as if, having succeeded in marrying her, he no longer wanted her. It was almost as if he didn’t care about her at all. Gillian glimpsed it in his eyes, heard it in his voice, and she began to worry.

  She told herself that she had imagined the change. She told herself that Colin loved her. She told herself there was any number of reasons for the way he looked at her and the way he spoke to her. She could tell he was disappointed. But he was her husband, for better or for worse, and Gillian did her best to please him.

  But she’d only had three days in which to prove her devotion. He had left, and now she feared for his safety as much as for her own. She knew his work was dangerous, knew he could be captured—perhaps even wounded or killed—and she’d tried to be brave and strong and patient, but it was hard to be brave and strong and patient when she was plagued by hunger and cold and loneliness and the constant nagging fear that somehow everything had gone terribly wrong.

  If only he’d left her with some money or her jewelry or something of value to trade for coal and food. If only he hadn’t needed it all. Gillian bit her bottom lip a little harder, hoping the pain in her lip would distract her from the empty rumbling of her belly and the cold.
She had never thought of herself as a particularly selfish person and would have willingly given her husband the cash and coin she kept tucked away in the hidden pocket of her reticule for emergencies, if he’d only said he needed it.

  But Colin hadn’t mentioned needing her emergency money to finance his journey. He’d simply taken it, along with her grandmother’s pearl earrings and the gold locket her parents had given her to mark her fourteenth natal day.

  Three days after their marriage, Colin had taken everything she had, slipped silently out of their room, and disappeared. And she didn’t know if he was coming back for her.

  During the past few days, Gillian had suddenly become aware of the precariousness of her situation. She’d been so busy worrying about her husband and the state of her marriage that she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to herself. But then she realized she had no money to pay for the coal for the fireplace or for the little luxuries she’d always taken for granted, like food and hot water and clean clothes, a bed to sleep in, and a roof over her head. Gillian supposed it was cowardly to admit it, but she was a stranger in a strange land, and she’d suddenly become very aware that any day now, she could find herself at the mercy of innkeepers she could not pay.

  She couldn’t go back home. Edinburgh was a long way from London and without money her best option had been to go down to the docks and obtain passage on her father’s ship, The Lady Dee. Gillian calculated that it should still be anchored in the firth, but her room faced the close instead of the waterfront. Unfortunately, her only access to windows that faced the waterfront was the inn’s taproom, and her first foray into that territory had proved disastrous. After being rudely and roughly accosted by several of the inn’s drunken patrons, Gillian had been forced to call the innkeeper for help. He’d escorted her to her room and strongly suggested that she remain there where she was safe.