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Village close to Bath, January 1795
Am I really going to prostitute myself for a warm bed and a hot meal? Caroline Winter thought as she glanced around the public room of the inn.
Her heavy skirts that had been frozen stiff only half an hour ago, her limbs that were trembling, and the starvation in her stomach that growled like a beast that had not been fed in months were answer enough. She would be lucky if she managed to make it through the night without suffering from fever in the morning. And what good would her virtue be if she was ill?
The question then remained: Who should she approach? The public room was full of people like her who could not afford a room at the inn, but had to seek shelter from the blizzard outside. But none of them would do. It needed to be a gentleman with a room. Someone who would let her stay in his bed even after the. . . Caroline did not know what to call it. The act, she supposed. A lot of the men who had secured rooms at the inn were eating there, giving her little chance to find someone. She needed to act quickly if this was her plan.
And it would have to be. Even though she had inched as close to the fireplace as possible, she was still freezing. It would be impossible for her clothes to dry properly while she was still wearing them. They would probably still be damp in the morning when she would have to walk the last fifteen miles to Bath. She would have to be extremely lucky to not catch an illness.
At least if she found a gentleman and went with him, she would not have to be wearing her wet clothes. If she had time to hang it properly before they. . . then they would most likely be dry in the morning. Right now, wearing dry clothes that had been warmed by the fire seemed like the greatest luxury of all.
A man in a dark grey woolen great coat entered the public room behind the scrounged-over innkeeper. He was brushing snow out of his dark brown hair, holding his hat in the other. The innkeeper cleared a table for him close to where Caroline was standing by the fire.
“Your room will be ready in a moment, sir,” the innkeeper said. The rest of their conversation was muffled by the noise in the room, but Caroline could hear the man order coffee and a meal while he waited. She was also certain that she heard him inquire after a hot bath.
A hot bath. Caroline almost sighed at the thought. Soaking her sore, blister-covered feet into the hot water and feeling how her toes prickled back to life would feel like. . . well, pure agony to begin with, but then it would feel like heaven, lowering herself into the hot water. Caroline had not had a proper hot bath since she had left her father’s estate two years ago.
It had to be him; Caroline decided. The hot bath did it. She inspected the man a little further from the corner of her eye. His dark brown hair that was probably usually very fashionably done was now plastered to his forehead by the snow outside. She could not make out his eye color, but suspected that they were brown as well.
What difference does eye color make if I am going to prostitute myself? Caroline scolded herself, but it did make a difference. She would not follow any man to his room. This would be her first time and she needed someone who would be gentle.
The man seemed like he would. She was not certain why she thought so. Perhaps because he was fairly young; he could not be more than three to five years older than her. There was something about his manner that suggested that he was used to having a great responsibility, but also that he tended to it with great severity. The type of man she felt she could trust. It had to be the way he had addressed the innkeeper and the grace with which he had sat down.
She looked away and shook her head, while smiling at herself. She was making up a story about him now. She could not possibly tell how he was, and yet, when she looked back at him, she felt sure, that that was exactly how he was.
The innkeeper brought him a hearty meal of vegetables and several large pieces of ham, along with a cup of coffee. Caroline’s stomach grumbled even louder. It felt like a small animal was throwing itself around inside of her, gnawing at her insides in frustration.
She had not had anything to eat since yesterday morning. She had wanted to save the few coins she had left for the coach to Bath. She had known that she would not be able to make it all the way, but had wanted to go as far as possible by coach.
Even though she liked walking, she was not so foolish that she imagined that a hike of twenty miles in the middle of January would be amusing in any way. When she set out this morning, she had felt certain that she would manage to reach Bath and the safety of her aunt’s house by evening, but then the blizzard had appeared, almost out of nowhere, and she had had to seek shelter in the inn, along with everyone else.
Caroline looked back at the man who was eating now. Her eyes were glued to the food as he cut it neatly before eating it. He had clearly been brought up well; every time he had taken a bite, he would put down his utensils and swallow his food before he would cut another piece of ham and put it in his mouth with the fork at just the right angle.
He could not be a soldier or a merchant then, who had recently made a lot of money. He was born with it, which for some reason, felt reassuring. She could not help but feel that a man born as a gentleman would probably be, well, gentler, than a man who had grown up in less fortunate circumstances and maybe even had been to war.
You’re being a snob now, Caroline, she told herself. His origin should not matter; yet it did, since her mother had installed just the same manners in her. If the food had been presented to her in this moment, Caroline felt certain that her mother would be glad that she was not alive to see her. Caroline would have devoured the food like a beast, afraid that someone would take it away from her.
Caroline followed the last piece of ham from the man’s plate to his mouth. At that moment, he looked up and caught her staring at him. Her instinct was to look away, since her mother of course had also taught her not to encourage a man’s attention. But since the whole point was to raise his interest in her, she looked straight back at him and smiled a little.
He did have brown eyes, Caroline was able to make out, as the man’s eyes widened slightly in surprise. She could only wonder what he thought of her. The last two years had seen her clothes deteriorate even further. Both the cloak and the dress had been a couple of years old when she had left her father’s estate, and the time in between had done nothing for their appearance. She had mended them several times and had to apply patches of different fabric to the elbows of her coat.
Her blue eyes, her light brown hair, and tall, slender figure had given her some improper offers over the years though, but Caroline knew that the scarcity of food had done nothing good for her figure. Her rib cage was sticking out and her breasts were almost gone. Hopefully the man would not notice with the many layers of clothes she was wearing now, and, from what she understood, when she was first undressed, it would not matter much to him.
Caroline felt her heart jumping in her chest when the man smiled back at her. Laugh lines formed at his eyes, and he suddenly seemed older than she had judged him to be. Perhaps he was in his late twenties or early thirties and not in the middle of his twenties as she had thought.
She knew that she should look away, but it felt like his brown eyes had captivated hers and would not let go of them. Just as she would not have been able to leave if he had held on to her wrist. The notion was absurd, and she pried her eyes from his to look at his dark grey jacket instead. The fit was perfect, she could tell. Only the finest tailors in London could achieve a fit like that. Could he be of noble birth? She gulped; perhaps she was striving too high in hoping to approach him.
“May I offer you a cup of tea, miss?”
Caroline almost jumped with surprise to hear the man’s voice. Two men were sitting between them, and Caroline could see that they turned their heads to look at her. Of course, the proper thing would be to say no, but her aim was not to be proper tonight.
“I’d like that very much,” Caroline managed to get out without her teeth chattering.
The man smiled a little and moved to make room for her on the bench along the wall. Caroline walked on stiff legs to sit down beside him, her heart pumping fast and hard with both nervousness and anticipation. The sound of it almost drowned out all other noises in the public room except for the humph from one of the men that had sat next to her.
Caroline tried to ignore having heard it, as she sat down beside the brown-eyed man. She deliberately did not sit close enough for her still wet dress to touch his breeches, but close enough that she could smell his cologne — a pleasant smell of sandalwood over the smell of firewood, coffee, wet wool, and unwashed bodies that clung to the public room.
The man caught the attention of the innkeeper and ordered tea.
“Do you want food as well, miss?” he asked Caroline, who did not trust her voice and could only nod, and the man ordered vegetables and ham for her as well.
Caroline smiled gratefully at him, unable to say anything. How did one proceed from here? Should she simply proposition that he took her upstairs when they had eaten? The man saved her the trouble of having to come up with an appropriate subject for their conversation when he asked her what her name was.
“Caroline Winter,” she replied.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Winter,” he said as he smiled broadly. “A very appropriate name for tonight’s weather.”
“Indeed, although unfortunately, it gives me no divine powers to control it whatsoever,” Caroline said and smiled back.
“No, me neither,” the man said and added, when he saw her puzzled look, “My name is Hugh Winterbottom.”
Caroline could not help but laugh. The man, Hugh, she supposed she should call him, given how she wanted to spend the night with him, smiled broadly. His teeth were very white, and one of his front teeth very charmingly overlapped the other.
She had no time to comment on the similarities between their names, since their tea arrived in that instant. She poured a cup for him, offering him both sugar and milk, but he declined both.
Caroline usually preferred her tea with just a tiny splash of milk, but since she did not know when she would eat again, she poured both a hearty dose of milk and plumped several pieces of sugar into it, before emptying it in two sips. The result of all the milk was that the tea was only lukewarm, and she quickly poured herself another cup, drinking it without adding milk or sugar.
“You’re one of those who do not have a preference regarding your tea?” Hugh inquired with a smile.
Caroline was in the middle of pouring her third cup.
“Oh, no, usually I’m very particular,” she said and interrupted herself by taking a sip of the cup.
“But not tonight?”
Caroline shook her head, finishing her third cup before she spoke.
“I usually take my tea with milk, but I wanted something warmer right now. . .” she started to babble, but the innkeeper thankfully arrived with her food, and she did not have to say anything else. She had no idea how she was going to seduce Hugh while talking about tea.
Caroline tried desperately to eat slowly and take her time with it, like she had seen Hugh do only minutes earlier. It took all her willpower not to throw herself at the food, which meant that she was hardly paying attention to Hugh as he asked her a couple of questions.
Yes, she was travelling alone; yes, she was heading into Bath and not away from the city as she gathered that Hugh was. No, she was not travelling with the post chaise, but had been on foot when the blizzard struck. After the last question, he did not ask her anything else and Caroline focused completely on the food.
It was not until the plate was empty and she had had a fourth cup of tea, this one also with loads of milk and sugar, that she remembered that her objective had been to charm Hugh into sleeping with her. It seemed highly unlikely that he would want to now, given her poor manners at eating and conversation. A cold fear formed in her stomach at the thought that he might make her pay for the food and tea as well.
She looked up at him and smiled shyly.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid my conversational skills were a bit lacking,” she tried.
She almost sighed with relief when Hugh smiled at her.
“I gather that you were rather hungry, Miss Winter,” he said.
Caroline nodded and for a moment they simply looked into each other’s eyes again. Not as long this time, but it felt like the same connection was there. As if they were touching without actually touching.
She should touch him, Caroline realized when she looked away. This was how a woman showed a man that, without a doubt, she was interested in him in that way. Caroline looked around. The middle-aged stout man who had hmphed at her earlier was talking animatedly to the man next to him; to her other side, an elderly man was sleeping with his head resting against the wall. No one was looking at her.
Gently, Caroline placed her hands in her lap then slid one of them onto Hugh’s thigh, gently running it up the length of it. His breeches were made of fine wool, and she could feel the muscles in his thigh beneath the fabric. They seemed to tighten at her touch before he gently took her hand in one of his large warm hands.
“Miss Winter. . .” he began in a low voice, then interrupted himself by saying: “Gad, your hands are cold.”
Before Caroline had time to think, he had encapsulated both her hands in his underneath the table, seemingly warming them. He seemed to study her face. Caroline looked away, feeling a flush creep into her cheeks. He had rejected her advance.
“You are practically shivering, Miss Winter. You should retire to your room immediately,” he said in a low voice, his hands still warming hers.
Caroline forced herself to meet his gaze.
“I don’t have a room,” she said.
He looked away, then nodded.
“I should have figured,” he murmured, “And the innkeeper told me that I got the last one available.”
He sat with his profile to her, clearly contemplating a serious matter, before he slowly turned toward her.
“You should come to my room,” he said in a low voice. “It’s number five.”
Their eyes locked for a moment. Caroline was not sure what she saw in them. It certainly was not desire, but it did not matter. This was her chance to come out of this night without catching pneumonia.
She nodded just once.
“I’ll leave. You should wait a couple of minutes before you follow,” Hugh said.
Caroline nodded again.
Hugh let go of her hands and stood up. Caroline followed him with her eyes through the room. She had expected someone to shout something at her when she got up and left the public room of the inn exactly two minutes later, but no one seemed to be noticing her.