Free Winter Wedding by Joan Smith Page A

food in her room. Was it only one last chance to find someone to flirt with, to make Ben jealous? But he hadn’t seemed so very jealous.
    She listened for sounds of escape in the adjoining room, but heard only silence. A little later, she heard the long breaths of sleep. Doubting that Nel was clever enough to simulate sleep so well, she relaxed. Before she slept herself, she indulged in a long recall of that interesting day. Allingcote’s coming and seeming so happy to see her again. His sharp recollection of their former meeting in all its details, his renewed attentions, and Maggie’s strange expression when she asked if it had been at Bellingham’s that she met Ben. Obviously Ben had spoken of that party at home. Finally she thought how remarkably strange it was that she should be sleeping in the same inn as he, with only Nel Muldoon between them. On this symbolic thought, she slept.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    When Clara opened her eyes to an unfamiliar set of walls and draperies in the morning, she was momentarily confused. No sense of panic accompanied her confusion. She merely had to lie still a moment and think: where am I staying this week? This was not her room at Branelea—ah yes, the wedding, Allingcote, the inn—Miss Muldoon!
    Clara leapt from bed and ducked through the curtained arch to ascertain that Miss Muldoon still slept, as indeed she did.
    If only the chit could remain a Sleeping Beauty! In repose, she looked young and vulnerable, with her tousled curls spread over the pillow, and her rosebud lips partly open. She slept deeply, and as a glance at her watch told Clara it was only seven o’clock, she decided she, too, would return to bed for an hour. She didn’t expect to sleep, but to lie and anticipate that in an hour or so, she would be having breakfast with Allingcote.
    Before she had mentally had more than a bite of toast, for food figured very sparingly in this imaginary breakfast, she was back to sleep. And before much longer, Miss Muldoon’s blue eyes fluttered open. She lay still a moment listening. When she heard only silence beyond the curtain, she sat up, swung her legs out of bed, snatched her crumpled gown from the floor, and scrambled into it. Unable to fasten the back buttons, she threw a shawl over her shoulders and went tiptoeing down the stairs, peering about to left and right like a spy.
    “Good morning, Lady Arabella,” a cheerful voice called from an open doorway, and Lord Allingcote stood quizzing her. “I trust you slept well? Forgot to bring your hairbrush, did you? Never mind, Miss Christopher will be kind enough to lend you hers.”
    Nel assumed a dramatic pose and declaimed, “I hate you with all my heart, Benjamin Davenport!”
    A passing servant girl stopped to goggle at such interesting goings-on at an inn whose liveliest customer was usually a drunken traveler. “Breakfast for two, miss, if you please,” Allingcote told the servant, and ushered Nel into a private parlor.
    “At least let us hide your shameful dishevelment in here if you don’t mean to tidy up,” he said.
    When they were alone, her melodramatic manner vanished, and she took a chair, accepted coffee that he poured from the pot on the table, and sipped it calmly.
    “He hasn’t arrived yet,” Allingcote said. “You missed your beauty sleep to no avail. Did you sleep in that gown, by the by? He won’t like to see you looking so slovenly.”
    “He will be aux anges t o see me looking any way at all,” she replied smugly.
    In a short while food was brought by the highly interested serving girl. Hard at her heels came Miss Christopher, in the wildest disarray that she had ever appeared in in public. Her usually neat coil of hair had slipped from its hastily arranged roll, and a curl fell over her ear. Like Nel, her gown’s undone buttons were covered by her shawl. She came pelting into the parlor, and upon seeing Allingcote, she cried, “She’s gone, Ben! I have let her escape. Whatever are we