Free Folly's Reward by Jean R. Ewing

inn in the place.
    “Here comes the couple, Mr. Scott!” someone cried as Hal pushed open the door and they stepped inside.
    “Ah, the poor tired bairn!” a plump woman in an apron said. “He’d like some warm milk in the kitchen, I’ll be bound.”
    A rotund man with a smile like a hay rake beamed at Hal and Prudence. He seemed to be splendidly foxed, and most likely the proprietor.
    “Bless you, my dears!” he cried. “What might your names be now?”
    Before anyone else could speak, Bobby looked up at him.
    “I am Lord Dunraven,” the child said boldly. “And that’s Prudence, Miss Drake, and that’s Hal the silkie man.”
    “Then before these witnesses and almighty God, I declare you, Mr. Hal Silkiman, and you, Miss Prudence Drake, man and wife and bound together in holy matrimony from this day forth. That’ll be a shilling. Write up the paper, Jimmy! Go on, lad, kiss your bride!”
    The woman swooped Bobby up in her arms and carried him off to the kitchen.
    As Prudence opened her mouth to object, Hal couldn’t restrain himself. Glazed with exhaustion, but luminous with laughter, he leaned down and kissed Prudence with a thoroughness that was obviously entirely unnecessary.
    Warmth and sweet moisture invaded her senses again, leaving her weak at the knees, the blood hammering in her veins. It was so unfair. How could he?
    “There you are, my dears,” the rotund man said. “Here are your marriage lines!”
    “This is nonsense,” Prudence announced as soon as Hal released her. “We aren’t here to be married.”
    “Man and wife, right and tight!” the man replied. “And for the sake of giving the wee lad a name, forget the shilling! I’ve had enough damned ale for one night.”
    Thrusting a dirty piece of paper at Hal, the rotund gentleman slumped to the floor.
    Hal burst out laughing and slipped the paper into his pocket, while Prudence pushed through the crowd after Bobby. She found him happily drinking warm milk in the kitchen.
    “Hello, Miss Drake,” he said. “This is a very nice place, I think.”
    “A famous enough place and that’s a fact!” the plump woman exclaimed. “All the English lads and lasses run away to marry here in Graitney. Gretna Green, they call it, though some can’t wait so long and marry right there in the toll booth on the high road, a half mile before they get here.”
    “I did not come here to be married,” Prudence said quietly. “I would like somewhere private for myself and the child, please.”
    The woman showed her to a bedchamber upstairs, and invited her to lie down while the road was being cleared, but Prudence could not relax. The absurd marriage she instantly dismissed. It was obviously not legal—there was no Mr. Silkiman, after all.
    But who was he? A great deal now hinged on the answer.
    Hal had entranced her so simply, so easily, and not only by assailing her body—though there was that too in the end—but also by enthralling her mind. Was he a rake? Did he make a practice of carelessly seducing women? And why her? A plain, straitlaced governess?
    More important, was Hal a threat to more than her equilibrium? Was he a real danger to the child? Especially now that Bobby had announced that he was Lord Dunraven to a room full of strangers!
    She was pacing the room while Bobby looked at a book by the light of a candle, when a sudden tumult of noise from the courtyard below brought them both to the window.
    A crowd was pouring out of the inn with a great deal of shouting and gesticulating. A huge ox of a man strode at their head, roaring out threats to the night sky. Almost everyone seemed to be drunk.
    Half-carried by the mob, then hoisted shoulder high, a dark-haired man sang some sailors’ ditty in a voice oddly musical and graceful. The crowd formed a circle and dropped him into its center.
    A multitude of hands dragged off the man’s coat, then his shirt, leaving his lithe body naked to the night air from the waist up.
    The young man’s