At First Light

V.

An hour or more later, Hannah was curled up in an armchair by the fire in Sir Byrd's breakfast room, with Daniel Byrd on the chair pulled up next to her. He had sent her away into the care of the surprised housekeeper, who had taken care of the supply of clean clothes and the removal of soiled ones with only the barest hint of a raised eyebrow. Clean and dry, she had been brought down for breakfast, and found him similarly attired, and shaved, and washed, and waiting for her. They had made fast, silent work of the coffee, toast, ham, eggs, and chocolate, and warm and fed had retired to the seats by the fire. Sir Byrd was yet absent, having been snowed in at Mr Templeton's house overnight, and they had the room and house to themselves.

Hannah eyed Daniel sleepily. She had been pleased to find his face just as charming shaved, but was thinking that whoever had arranged his hair had done too severe a job, and that it might be nice to disarrange it.

Daniel yawned, and settled back in his chair, resting his feet out in front of him towards the fire. "Where do we go from here, Miss Templeton? Bath? London? Timbuktu?"

"I don't know." A question had been burning in her mind for some time. "Why were you drunk in the shed last night, when you were supposed to be at my father's?"

He laughed, and went on laughing for some time before he was sober enough to explain. "I confess, the very same reason as you. I called on a friend yesterday, and got rather below water with him, weeping in his arms, belabouring my sorrows in being practically forced to marry Awful Miss Templeton." His eyes glimmered with amusement. "My father sent his groom to fetch me, and he wasn't very sympathetic, as it happens. He told me to get in the carriage and sober up and give you a chance. Well I got in one door of the carriage, and then out the other side when he wasn't looking, and ran away into the fields. When I saw the shed, I thought to myself that my father would never think to look for me there. It all seemed very logical at the time."

"Then..."

"My feelings for you," said Daniel, "Were quite the same as yours for me. My father always told me you were so smart, and so good, and so well-behaved – I thought you were a frightful bluestocking."

"Oh I'm not! You must know I'm not!"

"I do." He smiled at her. "But I was surprised to find it was you – I knew as soon as you mentioned my name who you were. And I didn't want to say it was me. I thought – well I thought if you were truly awful, I could get a warning of it without you knowing who I was."

"And am I truly awful?"

"No." He was very solemn. "You're much worse. You're twice – ten times as pretty as he said. You're impossibly stubborn. You're too soft-hearted for your own good. You're nowhere near as snobbish as you should be. You're a terrible liar. You're wilful..." He trailed off. "I can't believe my father thought he had to lie about you. You're wonderful."

She blushed, and turned her face to hide the heat in her cheeks in the heat from the fire. "You're quite different to what I thought too," she admitted. "Much more interesting."

They fell into silence, and for some time there was no sound in the room but that of the spitting fire. Hannah was thinking about what might have happened if they had both gone to dinner yesterday after all. She wasn't sure that she would have liked Daniel so much if she had met him under the cool strictures of a formal dinner, when he was on his best, most distant behaviour, trying, probably, to be the person his father had made him out to be.

Daniel broke the silence first.

"You didn't say. Where do you want me to take you?"

The idea of London or Bath seemed like a distant and not entirely pleasant dream now, in the warm, comfortable breakfast room. Hannah didn't want to leave the fire, or the chair, or the man beside her. She looked pleadingly at him.