Lie by Moonlight by Amanda Quick

register around with a short, brusque movement and studied the name on the page. “The handwriting looks the same as that of the teacher’s.”
    “She signed the register for all of them—the girls, herself and Smith.”
    “Describe Smith.”
    Ned shrugged again. “Nothing remarkable about him. Medium height, I’d say. Rather ordinary-looking, to tell you the truth.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Lizzie, can you recall anything about the man who accompanied the teacher and her girls the other night?”
    She forced herself to turn slowly, as though the question had distracted her from more important work.
    “I believe that he had brown hair,” she said politely.
    “Is that all you can recall?” the stranger demanded angrily.
    “I’m afraid so, sir. Like Ned here said, there was nothing in particular to remark about him.”
    “Where in blazes would she find a hired guard around here?” the gentleman asked.
    They both looked at him, politely blank-faced, and said nothing.
    “I’m wasting my time,” he muttered.
    Without another word he turned on his heel, walked out of the inn and got into the waiting carriage.
    Ned scooped up the coins on the counter and walked into the office. He put a comforting hand on Lizzie’s shoulder. Together they watched the vehicle roll out of the yard and turn in the direction of the village and the train station.
    “Mr. Smith was right when he said that someone would likely come around making inquiries about the teacher,” Ned said.
    She shivered. “Thank goodness Smith did not ask us to lie in exchange for the money he gave you. I don’t think it would have been easy to fool that man.”
    Smith’s request yesterday morning had been simple and quite straightforward. He had put ten pounds on the counter and spoken very politely to Ned. “There will be questions asked. Feel free to say that the teacher hired me to see her and the girls safely onto the London train. But I would take it as a great favor if you could keep your description of me as vague as possible.”
    “In a manner of speaking we did lie,” Ned said. “We told the man from London that there was nothing remarkable about Mr. Smith.”
    “Well, there wasn’t,” she said. “At least not in regard to his features or his height.”
    “There was something about him, though . . .” Ned let the sentence fade away, unfinished.
    There was no need for words, she thought. They had both been in the innkeeping profession long enough to have become sound judges of human nature. There had, indeed, been something about Mr. Smith, something remarkably dangerous. But the teacher had seemed to trust him and that had been good enough for her. Because there had been something about the teacher, too.
    Lizzie had seen the sort of fierceness and determination in the woman that one saw in females throughout the animal kingdom when their young were threatened.
    She reached up to cover Ned’s fingers with her own. “Never mind, the business is finished, at least as far as we’re concerned, and we’ve nothing to complain of. We’ve turned a nice profit.”
    “True enough.”
    “What is it that still troubles you?”
    Ned exhaled deeply. “I’m damned curious about why Mr. Smith didn’t ask us to lie outright. Given the amount of money he put on the counter yesterday morning, I expected him to instruct us to say nothing at all about him or his companions.”
    “Instead, he merely asked us to keep any description of him to a minimum. It does seem peculiar, doesn’t it? Ten pounds is a lot of money for such a simple request.”
    “Got a hunch,” Ned said slowly, “that Smith wanted to be certain that the gentleman from London was told that the teacher and her students had a bodyguard.”
    “Why?”
    “Perhaps because he wanted to warn him off.” Ned rubbed the back of his neck. “But there is another possibility.”
    “What?”
    “Smith may have wished to distract the elegant man.”
    “I don’t