Her aches and pains and the stress of her situation would have made it hard for her to sleep peacefully in the most luxurious of beds, but stuck in an old armchair it was a wonder she slept at all. And there was nothing better. A large sofa stood at the other end of the room, long enough to stretch out on, but Victorian horsehair, which meant it was as hard as a board and weighed a ton. Pattie didn’t think she could drag it to the fire. She had to be by the fire, and she was sure that if she tried Duncan Keld would hear her and might come down to see what she was doing. She dreaded that. She didn’t expect to see him again before morning, but she knew that if there was any sound of movement in the rooms above, much less of footsteps on the stairs, she would be scared out of her wits. He didn’t fancy her. She wasn’t his type. The state she was in now she couldn’t see how she could be anybody’s type, but as he’d said, she was a woman and she was here, and suppose he got drunk.
