Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(89)

When they stopped to change horses, North left Godfrey nestled in a blanket on the seat inside, assigned the groom to sit next to him, and leaped up beside Hickett, taking the reins. He could drive faster than the coachman.

After another twenty minutes, he sensed that Hickett had something he needed to say. “You’d best make a clean breast of it,” North advised, steering the phaeton around a slow-moving mail coach.

Hickett clung to the side of the vehicle. “Miss Belgrave isn’t a barmaid. But she knows what it is to earn an honest wage.”

“I agree,” North said, leaving the mail coach behind.

“She’s better off earning it in my sister’s tavern than in some cottage of yours, my lord. If you want to let me go for saying it, so be it.”

“‘Cottage of mine,’” North repeated slowly.

“I heard as how you offered her three hundred pounds and a cottage. Mabel overheard it.”

“Mabel misunderstood.”

“Miss Belgrave, she isn’t that sort. She’s an innocent. Even Mabel wouldn’t say anything about her that way. She tells the boy stories of his mother at bedtime.”

“My offer to support Miss Belgrave implied nothing improper,” North said, his voice turning frosty despite himself. Like his aunt, the coachman was merely expressing the protective affection that Diana inspired in everyone around her.

“You didn’t just imply it,” Hickett said flatly. “From what I heard, you said it out and out, and had her up against the door as well. You can’t blame the girl for taking fright and running to Manchester. She can do better than that, my lord.”

Better than you was the unspoken implication.

“She doesn’t care to be your duchess,” Hickett continued. The man really didn’t know when to shut up. “Nor the other thing either. She won’t marry you, but that doesn’t mean she won’t make some other man a good wife.”

“A man she meets in the tavern?” North asked curtly.

Hickett narrowed his eyes. “There’s many a man in the Beetle & Cheese who wouldn’t make a lady an offer that’s a disgrace to say aloud.”

After that, North concentrated on driving.





Chapter Twenty-four





The Beetle & Cheese



The moment Diana took her place behind the bar, someone had roared, “Her Majesty’s arrived!” With that, men crowded up to take a closer look. Given their greedy eyes, she was glad for every inch of the stout barrier between them.

Diana took a deep breath and addressed the man most directly in front of her. “What will you have?”

“Mumphss,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked. His Manchester accent wasn’t easy to understand.

“Mumphiskiss!” he repeated, with emphasis.

Diana poured the first ale that came to hand and pushed it across to him. He flipped a coin at her, which she put into a box behind the bar, as Mrs. Barley had instructed. Two more men were shouting and shoving farther down the bar, and someone to her right slammed a tankard so loudly that it made her jump.

She hurried to the other end of the bar and managed to serve the two obstreperous men. Then she ran back, summoned by the slamming tankard.

After two hours of this—during which she could scarcely pause for breath, let alone sit down to rest—she had a new, profound respect for barmaids. She had spilled beer down her front, which the men appreciated. Three or four of them were motionless on their stools, their eyes locked on her breasts. One of them kept shouting at her and breathing heavily through his mouth when he ordered, which rendered his demands impossible to understand.

At some point, her hair had come unfastened and fallen down her back. She let it go. She didn’t have time to bother, not when she had to run back and forth along the bar, dodging to avoid grasping hands, pushing tankards of ale across, collecting coins.

She had no idea what she was meant to be charging. Mrs. Barley had gone over it quickly, but Diana couldn’t remember what she’d said. As a result, she just said, “No change,” over and over.

One customer, who informed her his name was Harvey, kept his eyes glued to her breasts and his tongue plastered to the back of his front teeth. Every time she stood in front of him, he adjusted his breeches and eyed her like an obscene owl.

Mrs. Barley had been serving the tables. At some point, she raised an eyebrow, and Diana nodded, signaling she was finished. She pushed another tankard across the bar, as Mrs. Barley made her way across the room.

Her arms ached and—insult to injury—beer had soaked all the way through to her chemise. “I’m useless as a barmaid,” she told Mrs. Barley, with a tired laugh. She used to think she was exhausted at the end of a long day in the nursery, but she hadn’t truly understood the meaning of that word until now.

“It would have helped if you knew how to return change,” Mrs. Barley said, smiling at her. “But you’ve kept the beer flowing, and it’s given the lads something to talk about for many a day. I’m that grateful.”

“Don’t leave us, Your Majesty!” the men lined up at the bar shouted. They were the agreeable ones, with jovial rather than lustful eyes.

“I’ll just run over to the inn and get one of the lads to help me for the rest of the night.” Mrs. Barley rushed out the door.