Chapter Four

“Ma’am, please, calm yourself. How can I help you?”

The words screaming around inside Flora’s head at that moment were unrepeatable, and the urge to strike Campaign’s suavely smiling face intense, but good breeding stayed her hand. She’d already shocked herself with the tears and was struggling to bring her emotions under control.

“You, sir, are a…a…cheat and a liar!” she exclaimed, jabbing a finger at him. “That hair tonic you gave me, it—it— Oh, I can’t bring myself to say it. Yes, I can. I’m utterly, utterly ruined. You’ve made me a laughing stock.”

The smile vanished, and the doctor stared at her intently. After a moment he said, “Is that my best customer, Miss Hartington, hiding her pretty face behind a veil?”

She nodded. She had been a good customer. Because, until now, everything she’d bought from him had worked.

“What, exactly, has happened to upset you so?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you here,” she whispered. “I need somewhere private to show you.” Fear threatened to swamp her, and she added in a rush, “Oh, you’d better be able to rectify this, or…or…I don’t know what I’ll do!”

After a shifty glance around, he grasped her elbow and propelled her up the steps into his wagon. As she stood there in the gloomy interior, incoherent with anguish, he lit a lantern overhead and pulled down the canvas flap at the entrance, closing them in.

She went very still, suddenly regretting her outburst. Maybe she should have saved her complaint until morning and brought a companion or two along. Was she safe, concealed and contained like this, with a man who was no gentleman?

“Please sit down.” He was all politeness, removing a heap of books from one end of an upholstered bench and placing them on the floor. The look he gave her was both friendly and concerned, so she sat, and pulled up her veil.

She wriggled about uncomfortably on the embroidered cushion. There was a lump underneath it. Reaching in, she pulled the object out, but when she saw what it was, her hand shook so much, she nearly dropped it.

“Oh, excuse me,” he said, carefully retrieving the pistol from her. “I’d forgotten I left that there. You can’t be too careful when traveling alone, you understand.” He tucked the weapon away amongst a heap of medical clutter. He then swept a stack of papers and a bunch of dried plants off his bed and sat opposite her.

As he did so, something was pushed out from beneath the mattress and fell with a metallic clink to the floor.

A dagger.

She leaped to her feet, but he was up before her, and pushing her back onto her seat.

“Look at me,” he said quietly.

Her heart pumped so noisily she was surprised they weren’t both deafened. This was definitely the last time anger got the better of her. She’d no idea she was walking into an armed encampment.

“What do you mean to do to me?” she quavered, keeping her eyes glued to the dagger.

“Nothing at all!” he exclaimed, releasing her, and stepping back abruptly. “I’d never hurt anyone. Well, not deliberately. Unless I was threatened. I have to protect myself, as would anyone else with coin and marketable goods in his possession. Why, my copy of Gerard’s Herbal alone would fetch—” He grimaced. “But then, whoever stole it from me would probably be too stupid to recognize its value. They’d throw it in the fire they cook their conies over.” He rolled his eyes. “But that’s beside the point. I’m a healer, ma’am, so I don’t go about wantonly hurting others. Now, what’s happened to distress you so?”

She stared at the knife that lay between their feet, then looked up at him. “Um…”

“Oh, yes, of course. Forgive me.” He stowed the dagger away at the opposite end of the wagon from where he’d put the pistol. Apparently, he expected his enemies to come at him from all directions. What would he do, she wondered, if they cut a hole through the side of the wagon? Were there weapons concealed along the vehicle’s flanks as well, hidden amongst all the paraphernalia?

She noted the position of the dagger. Just in case she might have need of it herself.

Taking a fortifying breath, she said, “You may, or may not have noticed, on the various occasions when I’ve bought things from you, that I have hair of an unremarkable color. Light brown, I suppose one might say. I wasn’t unhappy with that color. But after using your hair tonic— Well, just look at it!” With a dramatic flourish, she removed her bonnet.

He looked, pursed his lips, and gave a low whistle. Leaning over, he pulled a strand of her hair free from her loosely pinned bun and scrutinized it. Then he sat back down and reached for her hand.

Puzzled, she didn’t object as he pressed her fingers between his own, saying earnestly, “My apologies. I can see there’s been some terrible mistake. But the truth is, it makes you look absolutely ravishing.”

She gaped at him. “Fol-de-rol! You should see what it looks like in full daylight. I have never before seen so unnatural a color.”

Flattery wouldn’t work on her. Redress was what she needed.

“But it suits you, ma’am. I’m quite spellbound. Has the color taken evenly across the head?”

“I don’t know!” she snapped. What did that have to do with anything? “I’ve rinsed it, and washed it, and rinsed it again until my head stung, but not one drop of the color has come out.”

“Let me see.”

He reached up and removed the pins holding her bun, so her hair cascaded over her shoulders. Until this point, the only notable thing about it had been its length, reaching to below her waist. But now, after all her frantic washing, it was completely out of control.

She tugged at a lock in disgust. “It’s horrible.” Never before had she seen such a violent, fiery shade of red.

And if Campaign couldn’t fix it, she’d make him shave it off and buy her a wig.

He crouched by her feet and combed his fingers through her tresses, examining the strands. She shivered, despite the warmth of the evening.

It was soothing, having one’s hair toyed with and stroked. As he’d known it would be, no doubt. Did he do that to all customers who complained?

All his female ones, at least.

“You’ve done a laudable job, ma’am,” he pronounced eventually, rousing her from her semi-daze. “The color’s very even. No one would know it wasn’t natural.”

She blinked, then jerked her head away with a hiss of annoyance. This touching was all highly improper—and was getting her nowhere. “Anyone seeing it in daylight would not be of that opinion,” she said. “Tell me you can undo the damage.”

“Damage, you say? But you look quite dazzling. You’ll be the envy of all your friends.”

“Don’t try to flatter me, sir—”

“To you, Miss Hartington,” he said with a disarming grin, “please, I’m simply Lawrence.”

“I thought you were called Ephraim?” A man who changed his name from one year to the next? There was something decidedly odd about that.

He cleared his throat. “Yes, yes, I was. But I go by my first name now. I ran into some difficulties—but I won’t sully your ears with the details. I beg you to forget that name.”

He wasn’t in a position to do any begging. “I suppose you’re going to tell me next Campaign isn’t your real name either.”

“Not just beautiful, but intelligent, Miss Hartington. No, it’s Campion. But ‘Campaign’ looks far better painted on the side of a wagon.”

None of this was to the point. “Now listen here,” she snapped. “I’ve learned enough about itinerants, and mountebanks, and players and so forth, to know when I’m being soft-soaped and bamboozled.”

“Bamboozled?” He raised an eyebrow and his dark eyes twinkled. “But I’m telling the honest truth. Your hair is beautiful. I could definitely use you to demonstrate the superiority of my hair tonics and dyes.”

The cheek of it! “No one wants to dye their hair flaming red,” she blustered. “It isn’t at all the thing.”

He looked undaunted. “Fashions change.”

She flung up her hands in despair. “I’ll be a laughing stock if you can’t change the color back. I’ll never hear the end of it from the Daniells. Or Lucinda, when she finds out.”

“Lucinda?”

“You remember Mrs. Allston? My older sister, who used to live with me.”

“I do, indeed. But she’s moved out, you say?”

“Yes, because Charlotte, my niece, married the Earl of Beckport late last year. But you’d already left the area, so I suppose you didn’t hear the good news.”

“Ah. Well, it strikes me that, if she’s gone, you may ignore your sister’s opinions.”

Flora frowned down at her fiery mass of hair. He was trying to distract her now, which just wouldn’t do. Sitting up very straight and trying not to be perturbed by the various weapons in the wagon, she warned, “If you don’t help, I’ll denounce you in front of everybody.”

It wasn’t like her to threaten anyone, but in such dire circumstances, it was unavoidable.

Campaign—Lawrence—frowned at her, then reached into his waistcoat pocket.

She froze. Not another concealed weapon, surely? Could she get out of the wagon before he disabled her?

If his slender muscularity was anything to go by, the answer was almost certainly no.

She pressed her eyes tight shut and prayed she hadn’t been incredibly stupid in coming here alone.