Read Online Anita Mills by Miss Gordon's Mistake - Free Book Online

his eyes on the dress.
    “Actually, I am American.” It was, she decided almost as soon as she’d said it, the wrong thing to admit. His smile faded immediately. Thinking to retrieve the situation, she hastened to invent a reason for her existence there. “Alas, but I was orphaned, and my only relations are here, you see, and then I met John …” Her voice trailed off as though that explained everything.
    “Don’t look old enough to be married,” he decided, tucking his napkin over his yellow waistcoat. “Thought there must be a mistake when I saw you.”
    She was used to that at least. “I am four and twenty, sir. ’Tis my height, or lack of it, I suppose, that makes one think otherwise. My mother was short also,” she confided, reaching for a slice of bread. Hopefully, if her mouth were full, he would forebear asking too much.
    He poured himself a cup of coffee, then chiseled a chunk of sugar from the loaf. Stirring it into the steaming liquid, he leaned back to watch her. “I’d have you tell me what happened on the road—all of it.”
    The bread seemed like a lump of dough too large to swallow. She chewed valiantly, shaking her head, then gulped, forcing it down. Reaching for the teapot, she poured herself some and drank it plain. The hot liquid scalded, choking her, and she began to cough until tears came to her eyes.
    “Ought to take a little sugar and cream in that,” Barswell told her, waiting.
    She nodded and reached for the loaf, buying time by chipping off a piece of it. Stirring that into her cup, she picked up the cream pitcher. “Well, I did not actually see anything,” she said, her voice still strangled. “It was dark and raining.”
    “Approximately where did the attack occur?”
    She considered telling him, then realized that he’d surely wonder why she’d traveled hours more with a wounded man. “Well, I am not certain—a few miles back, I should guess,” she answered vaguely. “In truth, I was so upset that I cannot recall anything but the fact that my husband was shot, sir.”
    “I suppose I will have to get that from your coachman,” he conceded. “Now, how did the actual shooting occur?”
    “Someone fired a pistol.”
    He favored her with a pained expression that told her he considered her little better than half-witted. “I surmised that much, Mrs. Smith. What I meant to ask was if the door were opened, if the highwayman actually approached the carriage for your money? Did your husband struggle for possession of the pistol?”
    She started to say no, then recalled she’d had Jem tell the innkeeper that they’d been robbed. “Yes.”
    “He struggled with your husband, and yet you did not see him?”
    “There were two,” she volunteered. “Two of them. And neither of them actually entered the carriage. They ordered us to throw our valuables out. No, my husband did not struggle with them,” she added.
    “Do you have any notion as to why they shot him? Or perhaps you were so fearful that you did not look? Perhaps being female you hid your face.”
    She buttered her bread and took another leisurely bite. His attitude was annoying in the extreme. “Actually, I suppose ’twas because I fired at them. John advised against it, but I did not wish to lose our money.”
    “You fired a pistol, madame?” he asked incredulously.
    “Well, ’twas my husband’s. He keeps one under the seat,” she explained, warming to the tale. “But it was on my side, so ’twas I who retrieved it and fired.” Her blue eyes met his over the rim of her teacup. “I should have listened to John—there was only one shot, you see, and two of them. When the first fellow—the one who was picking up the money we’d cast out—well, when he bolted, the other one fired. The ball struck my husband.”
    “I thought you did not see anything,” he murmured, bemused.
    “Well, I did not, but I fired in the general direction of his voice. And it happened so very quickly, sir.”
    “And what