Earl Crush (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #2)

Chapter 18

G—if you should arrive in London before we do, please assure my brothers I’m perfectly safe! Lie, if necessary.

—from Lydia to Georgiana, scrawled upon the back of a bill of sale and thrust into the hands of a porter

They crept out of the alley once the Thibodeaux finished their haggling and began to move down the shop-lined street.

Lydia gritted her teeth. They were too recognizable, both of them—she with her hair and Arthur with his height and looks and general irresistibility. But they had to follow the Thibodeaux—had to, if possible, get close enough to discern what they were about.

It could not be a coincidence that the Thibodeaux had searched her room and now seemed to have followed them south. Perhaps they knew where Davis was and meant to reunite with him.

Perhaps—for some reason—they were after Arthur. She had to figure out why—had to get close enough to overhear their words or ascertain their lodgings.

But if Didier or Claudine turned around and saw Lydia and Arthur behind them, the game would, decidedly, be up. There would be no chance for the clandestine gathering of information if the Thibodeaux spotted them.

Arthur seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “I’ve a little gunpowder in my pocket,” he murmured, his mouth close to her ear. “Perhaps I can distract them with a wee explosion and then we can creep nearer—”

An explosion ? Surely there must be some less incendiary approach. Something covert, something they would not detect. She could—

A millinery just ahead provided a blaze of inspiration.

“This way,” she hissed, and pulled Arthur bodily into the shop.

“What do you mean for us to do—”

She pushed him into the window display—dozens of silk roses and artificial fruits and tiny figural birds—and then down to his knees. He was staring at her in frank astonishment, and she caught his chin in her hand and turned it toward the aged rippled glass. “Don’t look at me,” she whispered. “Watch them. Stay out of sight.”

And then she dashed farther into the shop to face the astonished proprietor.

Her usual anxiety at the notion of speaking to strangers rose up, as it always did, but the sheer urgency of the situation seemed to enable her to produce audible words.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. Her voice had come out bizarrely sanguine, as though she shoved large earls beneath window displays on a regular basis. Her blood was pounding in her ears. “Don’t mind us. The earl needs—a hat. We are”—she caught up her reticule and yanked at the strings, fishing out a ludicrous amount of coin—“in mourning.”

She shoved the coins into the proprietor’s hands. It was enough to buy a dozen hats, at least based on her knowledge of Bond Street. She presumed Scottish headgear operated on roughly the same sales-to-cost ratio.

The milliner blinked down at the coins. He had a jolly round face and a superlative conical Paris beau hat upon his head, and he must have been familiar with the bizarre whims of the aristocracy, because he nodded and gestured to the shop at large. “Indeed, my lady. Take your pick.”

She gave him a grateful smile as she snatched up a black silk mourning bonnet. She thrust it onto her head, tucked the veil around her face, and made her way back to Arthur, vision only slightly obscured.

“Can you still see them?” she murmured.

“Aye,” he said. He flicked a startled gaze in her direction before returning to the street. “But hurry, Lydia.”

In answer, she snatched a straw hat from its place beneath the window, where it seemed to have been relegated as out of season. She ground it along the floor and then mashed it with her palm for good measure. The milliner behind her made an outraged sound, but she ignored him and shoved the hat down over Arthur’s brow.

It wasn’t enough. She turned frantically back to the window display and yanked at the wool draping. Roses flew everywhere in a shower of autumn-colored petals. A pear made of—she did not know what, something surprisingly springy—bounced off her boot. She pulled the draping free and wrapped it around Arthur’s neck like an overlong scarf.

He looked… original, at best. But his face was almost completely obscured by hat and scarf.

The milliner made another, louder sound.

“I do beg your pardon,” she squeaked. “Mourning! Quite upsetting!” And then she grabbed Arthur by the arm and drew him out the open door.

“I’m a widow,” she hissed when they regained the street. “You’re my footman. Slump down a bit and walk two paces behind me, and—yes, that’s it.”

It was remarkable, how ruffled he managed to look with only his eyes and brows visible. He ducked his chin, pulled the hat further down, and—

Well, it wasn’t perfect, and she’d obviously gone mad in the head, because her woolen pelisse was hunter green, not black, as anyone with eyes could see. But she thought their identities would be disguised, so long as the Thibodeaux did not look at them too closely.

Arthur’s murmured words were quick. “They’ve turned just ahead. Two more streets and then to your left. Go as fast as you can without drawing attention.”

She picked up her pace and then suddenly he was behind her, his hand on her shoulder.

“Wait,” he said. “Your hair.”

She felt his hand brush the back of her neck and, despite herself, she shivered. He nudged a loose lock up under the netting, then tucked the veil more securely about her shoulders.

And then they were off again, chasing the Thibodeaux. She walked quickly round the corner he had indicated and spotted the couple up ahead. Two more turns and then Didier and Claudine slowed, heading for a public house.

“The stables.” Arthur’s voice was low behind her, and she nodded and made for the whitewashed mews behind the inn. Arthur kept close behind, and they slipped inside without catching the attention of any roving groom or stable hand.

Once inside the stables, Arthur pushed open the door to an empty stall and urged her into it, bringing his body to shelter hers in the shadows. She could smell the tang of horses and the sweet undercurrent of hay.

He lifted her veil, baring her face, and tucked the thin fabric past the brim of her bonnet. “Good Christ,” he whispered, “I’m not sure whether that was cunning or mad.”

She gave a strangled laugh, exhilaration like tiny bubbles bursting in her blood. “It worked,” she managed, not entirely certain whether she was assuring him or herself.

It had worked. She had not fallen apart in a moment of crisis.

“Aye.” His hand, which had come to rest on her shoulder, was a warm solid weight she could feel through her pelisse. “Aye, it worked. You’re clever as the devil, Lydia Hope-Wallace, and twice as brave.”

Brave. She had never considered herself so. But she could feel the earnest gravity of his gaze, the powerful pull of his perception of her.

Perhaps she had been brave. Perhaps she could believe it.

“We should search the carriages out back while they’re inside the public room,” he said.

She forced her brain to return to the situation at hand. “Yes,” she breathed. “Of course. If they left Kilbride House after we did, they can’t have been here long. Their luggage might still be in one of the hired hacks. Some letters, perhaps, or some other clue.”

“Aye—or one of the drivers may know where they’re headed next.”

“Do it,” she said. “I’m going to go find someone to carry a message back to Huw and Georgiana.”

His eyes looked darker in the shadows, the green a forest, the blue a deep still pond. “A message?”

“Yes.” She licked her lips and looked up at him. “To tell them to go on to London and speak to Jasper whilst you and I follow the Thibodeaux.”

His grip on her shoulder tightened. His face had gone taut as well, his expression pained. “If we’re right—if they’re the ones who searched your room and are connected to Davis—then it’s not safe for you to be here.” He hesitated, his gaze flickering to the window that revealed the line of coaches for hire behind the mews. “I should not do this. I should take you back to Huw.”

Some part of her felt cool relief at his words.

She could go back with Georgiana, back where it was safe. A small craven corner of her heart wanted desperately to retreat. Not because she was afraid—well, not only that—but because she did not know if she could manage whatever adventure was to come as they tracked the Thibodeaux.

Even to find a messenger and explain what she wanted seemed a near-insurmountable obstacle. She did not know precisely where she had left Georgiana, nor was she certain she could explain the turnings they’d taken to a stranger.

But—

Clever , she thought. And brave.

“This is important,” she said. “We can do this together. I know we can.”

His hand slipped into her hair. “You drive me out of my head,” he rasped.

He leaned down and kissed her then, swift and hard and unexpected. A heartbeat later he pulled away, then nudged her in the direction of the inn’s main building. “Send them a message and then make your way back here as quick as you can. I’ll look about while you’re gone and see what I can find.”

She started to go, then dashed back into the stall. She wrapped her fingers in his shirt and pulled him down for another kiss. His mouth softened against hers. His lips parted as they fitted against her own, and his arms came around her—at once safe and stirring.

“I’ll be as swift as I can manage,” she murmured.

“I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

She relinquished his shirt, kept to the shadows, and hastened back out to the courtyard. It was easy to find a porter, idling beside the inn’s front door, to carry a message to Georgiana. It was far harder to make him understand what she wanted, between her trembling voice and the anxious fog that seemed to suffuse her thoughts now that she was not in the middle of a crisis.

But through sheer force of will, she managed it. She scrawled a message upon a discarded bill of sale and pressed it into the porter’s palm along with a handful of coins. And then he was off, his hat tipped toward her as he went.

She took a shaking breath, and then a second, and then a third. And then—oh Lord, she was drunk on her own successes, perhaps—instead of returning to the mews, she slipped the veil back over her face and crept toward the front door of the inn.

There was a public dining room. If the Thibodeaux were inside, perhaps she could seat herself close enough to listen in on their conversation. She patted at the back of her head, trying to make sure that her hair was fully obscured. With her hair covered and the veil in place, she did not think they would know her.

But inside the dining room, she did not see them. A sylphlike barmaid with hair even redder than Lydia’s own sidled over to offer a table, but Lydia shook her head.

“I’m looking for my companions.” Oh hell. She’d attempted a mumbling Scottish accent to try to disguise her voice in case the Thibodeaux were somewhere within earshot, but she’d quite missed the mark. She sounded Russian.

“A man and woman.” Hang it, that wasn’t any better. Now she sounded Welsh, perhaps by way of Newcastle. “They just came inside. She was wearing a dark blue frock with gold piping.”

“Aye, I know the ones you mean,” the barmaid said. “They went out the back a few minutes ago. Took their pasties for the road.”

For the road.

The blood in Lydia’s veins went to ice.

Arthur. The coaches.

She threw herself back out the way she’d come, heedless of her flapping veil and the bemused glances of the public room’s patrons. She raced around the building and—barely sensible of what she was doing—ducked through the stable door and pressed herself to the wall.

Through the open shutters of the stable’s window, she could see the line of hacks for hire. She flung back her veil for a clearer view.

At the end of the line stood Didier Thibodeaux, arguing in thickly accented English with the final vehicle’s driver. Claudine had already mounted and sat on the high perch, her ankles crossed beneath her skirts and a paper-wrapped pasty in her hand.

At the coach’s window, plain as day to Lydia’s vantage, the leather curtain inside dropped suddenly, a quick unfurling that shielded the interior from view.

Lydia’s heart clenched in terror. Someone was inside the coach. Someone who did not want to be seen.

Didier appeared to win his argument with the driver. He swung himself up onto the bench, and the driver stepped reluctantly away, shaking his head and muttering something Lydia could not hear.

The coach rocked into motion. As she watched, the door cracked open, and a hand emerged, loosing something pale that fluttered to the ground.

The hand was Arthur’s. She knew it even as he drew quickly back into the coach—she recognized the strong fingers, the freckled burns, the muscular turn of his forearm.

Had he intended this? Surely not—he had no way of knowing the Thibodeaux would take that particular coach at that particular moment. He must have been searching the vehicles’ interiors, looking for the Thibodeaux’s belongings, and been forced to hide himself when they arrived.

She stood frozen with fear and indecision as the coach rolled away. As she watched, she saw the pale shape that Arthur had dropped, which resolved into something that made sense to her eyes as the rear wheels of the carriage passed beyond it.

It was the straw hat from the milliner’s. Half of his disguise. She supposed he’d meant it as a message to her: so she would know what had happened, grasp why he was not there when she returned.

He would want her to go back to Georgiana and Huw, she knew. To scurry off to safety like a mouse to a bolt-hole. But as she stared at the battered hat, some kind of insane courage rocked her. Set her back on her heels.

Arthur was in danger, and it did not matter if she was afraid.

To hell with mice and bolt-holes. She would not do it.

She ran back out to the courtyard. There was a reddish roan mare saddled and bridled near a mounting block, a man holding the reins while the horse placidly lipped at a bit of hay fallen between the cobblestones.

She plucked up her skirts, launched herself at the mounting block, and took the reins out of the man’s flabbergasted grip.

“Och, what the devil—” he began, but she yanked open her reticule to forestall him.

“How much for the mare?” she said breathlessly. “Forty pounds?”

His mouth gaped open. He had enormous black eyebrows, between which a prominent nose declared itself.

“Fifty?” She shoved one foot into the near stirrup and flung herself into the saddle. Her reticule tilted perilously, and she spared a moment to wonder if a waterfall of fresh-minted sovereigns would make her appeal more persuasive or less. “I’m in a great tearing hurry and would rather not haggle.”

His mouth snapped closed. His eyes fixed on the reticule. “Two hundred quid.”

Oh for heaven’s sake. It was an outrageous sum for the stocky mare. She ought not have said that bit about haggling.

“A hundred sovereigns,” she said. “That’s the whole purse.” Slightly lighter, after the visit to the milliner, but close enough. She held the reticule out to the black-browed man, letting it dangle temptingly from her fingers.

He reached out his hand and took the purse. He nodded.

Relief made her limbs light, her fingers almost numb where they gripped the reins. She squeezed her knees into the horse’s flanks, ducked her head, and urged the mare, as fast as she dared, down the street and after the Thibodeaux’s coach.