The invisible woman snorted and approached in a quick whoosh of skirts, her shadow relieving his eyelids from the merciless light.
"Thank you."
She sniffed. "There's a spring out past the stable if you'd care to clean up."
Collin opened both his eyes, taking in the dark shape of the woman standing over him. She retreated a little when he took the cup of tea and he could make out her blond hair and long face. Younger than he'd expected. Thirty at most. She slanted him a wary frown and moved away, glancing back at him only once.
"Thank you," he called again as she began to bang around in the other room. He swung his legs onto the floor and grimaced at the mud that spattered his clothes. He hoped it was mud, anyway.
The tea nearly scalded his tongue, but he drank it as quickly as possible. The promise of a dip in a cold pond prodded him to hurry. The water would hopefully ease his aching back and clear the ale fog from his head, and he didn't particularly care to argue with Alexandra reeking of sweat and mud and maybe worse.
"There's towels and such upstairs," the woman said when he brought the cup to the kitchen to set it on the oak table.
"Oh?" He threw a glance at the stairs, not even considering going up them. "She's not here." "Hm?"
"The lady's not here."
He watched her brow lower in concern, realized the coolness seeping down his cheeks was the feeling of blood draining from his face. She had gone. Grown angry and disappeared with the same wretched suddenness with which she'd appeared in his life.
"When did she leave?"
"Sunrise, same as when I got here. She needed help dressing. But she's not gone, you understand. Only went for a ride."
"A ride." He looked to the closed door as if it could confirm this. "You're sure?"
"Oh, yes." She smiled then, wide enough to reveal a gap where she'd lost a back tooth. Her brown eyes twinkled. "Had a bit of a row, did you?"
"A bit, yes."
With a chuckle, she turned back to the pot of water where she rinsed a wineglass before looking about the kitchen for more dishes. Her gaze fell on the ruined pie. "There are plates and knives in the cupboard, you know."
"Plates?" Collin stared at the pie with her, mind still reeling with the shock of thinking Alex had run off. "Oh. A crow got to it before we could."
"Hm. I thought perhaps she'd smashed your face in it."
He narrowed his eyes at her, a look that had terrified many a stable boy, but she only snorted again and went back to her chor
es, humming some jaunty tune as she moved about the room.
Collin spun on his heel and headed for the stairs. There were two rooms above, he found—one small room tucked in beneath the eaves at the end of the hallway. The door to the larger room stood open also, revealing a massive four-post bed and a bright yellow bedspread, mottled by the leafy light pouring through the window.
Spotting a wardrobe, Collin strode in and threw open the doors, searching for towels and soap. Instead, he found thin shifts and vividly colored dresses. He closed it with a snap. The dresser then.
The first drawer was empty. The second yielded a tangle of white lace and silk that startled him even more than her dresses had. He slammed it shut with a force that rattled the doors of the wardrobe.
Vowing to retreat without the towels if he encountered her stockings, he jerked open the bottom drawer.
"Finally." Linen sheets and soap in hand, he rushed out the door and back down the stairs.
"Have a good swim," a voice called.
"Thank you, um . . ." Collin turned to look at her, the edge of the front door gripped in his hand.
"Betsy."
"Betsy. My thanks."
Chapter 11