Chapter 22
Phoebe had not realized how loud the world was until she tried to run away from it.
The carrier’s cart rattled and jolted over every rut in the road, each bump knocking her spine and each creak complaining in a different key.
The canvas hood snapped in the wind. Chickens in a wicker crate objected shrilly to their circumstances.
Somewhere behind her, a pig grunted his steady disapproval of existence.
None of it quite managed to drown out the sound of her own thoughts.
She bemoaned missing the mail coach.
Fanny sat beside her, bonnet brim pulled low, gloved fingers clenched tightly together.
Their trunks sat wedged against the cart’s side, rope biting into worn leather.
On the opposite bench, an elderly gypsy with a shawl over her cap dozed with her chin on her chest, rosary beads dangled between gnarled fingers.
Every now and then, the woman would snore, jolt awake, murmur a prayer, then drift off again.
The driver clicked his tongue, and the horse trudged on.
Fields stretched on either side of the narrow lane, pale green under a sky of high, thin clouds.
Hedgerows blurred by. Once, Phoebe would have admired the rolling West Midlands’ hills, would have compared their soft rise and fall to the swell of music in a country dance or the fold of silk in a ball gown.
Now, the landscape was simply distance. Distance between her and Lobelia Hall.
Between her and a piece of parchment with her initials.
And most significant of all, between her and the man who had lied.
You have your dignity still, she reminded herself with hollow words. You did not stay for the promise of money. You walked away.
Fanny leaned in and whispered, “Are you quite comfortable, miss?”
Phoebe’s lips curved into a brittle smile. “Perfectly. I’ve always dreamed of rattling to London in the company of poultry.”
It had been Fanny who, after Phoebe had sobbed out everything the night before, had helped her fold gowns without asking questions she already knew the answers to, and Fanny who had arranged with the dairywoman’s cousin for a place on the carrier’s cart to the next posting town, where they hoped to catch a London coach.
This was not Phoebe’s first escape back to London, but it would certainly be her last. Mr. Vavara and India now awaited, a fitting consequence to her second round of misplaced trust and naivety; at least the merchant’s intentions were honest, however undesirable.
Phoebe’s throat ached, her mind returning, unbidden, to the letter she left on the dressing table, to the study, to…
his earnest eyes, tender voice, and proposal for courtship.
Then the codicil. Graeme had known and said nothing.
He had kissed her while an enormous inheritance with her initials lay hidden in his study.
She had told him about Freddy, about everything, and still he had thought it acceptable to hold such a secret from her.
Somewhere ahead, a lark ascended, singing as if the world were not a place where men lied with soft lips and hooded eyes.
The cart rounded a bend. The lane narrowed between steep banks, hedges high on either side. The horse slowed of its own accord on the incline, hooves thudding dully. The driver clucked encouragement.
Behind them, faint at first beneath the squeak and rattle of the cart, came another sound: distant, rhythmic thunder.
Hoofbeats.
Phoebe’s heart gave a perfidious flutter. Riders used the main coaching roads often, she told herself. This was nothing. A farmer. A messenger, perhaps.
The hoofbeats grew louder, faster, gaining on them. She refused to turn around. She refused to crane about like some heroine in a lurid Minerva Press novel, ears pricked for the sound of a lover’s pursuit.
Fanny, less lofty in her resolutions, twisted to peer out the back of the canvas curtain. “There’s a rider coming up quick, miss.”
“Then he will pass us,” Phoebe snipped, keeping her gaze fixed firmly ahead. “The road does not belong to us alone.”
The horse panted now, straining against the weight of cart and passengers. All the while, the hoofbeats drew nearer, then shifted rhythm, slowing, and drawing alongside.
The cart driver pulled at the reins. “Steady now, steady.”
A man’s voice, breathless and dreadfully familiar, cut through the clatter. “Ho there! Driver, might I beg a word?”
Phoebe’s heart stopped.
This was impossible. Absolutely impossible!
She stared hard at the opposite hedge.
The cart lurched to a hesitant halt. The chickens protested. The old woman jolted awake with an indignant snort.
Fanny hissed, “Miss—”
“Don’t. Do not say his—”
“Miss Whittington?” came that same voice, nearer now, closer than her own pulse. “Phoebe?”
Her resolve shattered with one treacherous movement: she turned.
Graeme sat astride a lathered bay, hatless, hair wind-tossed, coat flung back, dust streaking his boots.
His cravat was askew in a way that would have sent any London valet into hysterics.
His chest rose and fell with the effort of hard riding.
His eyes—those dear, infuriating, earnest eyes—were fixed entirely on her.
Phoebe’s breath caught. For the span of one heartbeat, pure relief washed through her, as fierce as it was foolish. Then memory returned like a slap: the codicil, the secrecy, the humiliation. She straightened her spine.
“Mr. Ellison,” she said coolly. “You are a long way from your ledgers.”
He flinched. “May I beg a moment of your time,” he said, voice rough, “if only at the roadside?”
The driver shifted uncertainly on his box. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but the lady’s fare is paid to the next town. I can’t be stoppin’ long.”
“I will compensate you for any delay,” Graeme said without taking his gaze off Phoebe. “Handsomely.”
The driver brightened. “No objection from me, sir. The lady?”
Every eye in the cart turned to her: Fanny’s anxious, the elderly woman’s curious, the chickens’ beady and indifferent. Phoebe’s fingers tightened into a fist. She could refuse. She should refuse. She had written what needed to be said. She owed him nothing more.
But, maddeningly, she remembered the sound of his voice when he had said, I believe you.
The way he had looked at her in the portrait gallery.
The gentleness of his hands when he had held her as if she were something precious.
Perhaps she owed herself at least one answer.
Yes, this was for her, not for him. She owed him nothing.
“Very well,” she said, keeping her tone thin with dignity. “A moment.”
The driver clicked his tongue, guiding the cart to the verge until the wheel bumped against the bank. Graeme swung out of the saddle, wincing as his boots hit the ground. Holding the reins in one hand, he used the other to steady the horse’s neck.
Fanny leaned in again. “I’ll come down with you, miss.”
“No. Wait here. If I am foolish enough to swoon into the ditch, you may fetch me then.”
Phoebe gathered her skirts and stepped down from the cart, accepting the driver’s hand for balance but jerking away before Graeme could offer his.
The lane smelled of dust and trampled grass and horse sweat.
They stood a few paces apart beside the cart’s wheel, the horse shifting restlessly at Graeme’s shoulder.
The driver made a show of checking harness straps while obviously listening with both ears.
Graeme swallowed audibly. Up close, he looked worse than she had first thought. There was stubble on his jaw, dark circles beneath his eyes, and the strained tightness around his mouth of a man who had been fretful for longer than he cared to admit.
“I did not expect to find you… on a cart,” he said inanely.
Phoebe arched a brow. “My apologies. Next time I flee a household, I shall be sure to hire a gilded carriage, that I may better suit your sensibilities.”
A breath of startled laughter escaped him. “Phoebe—”
“You have had two days to speak to me in person,” she cut in, the hurt sharpening her words. “Instead, you let me sit alone and think while you… what? Balanced accounts? Wrote to more marquesses to pry into my life? I confess the romance of it all overwhelmed me.”
He drew in a breath. “I did not come sooner because I thought you were… choosing. Between the codicil and—” He faltered, then, “—and me.”
She stared at him, speechless for a moment. “You thought I was up in my room weighing a fortune against a clerk? How flattering.”
He grimaced. “I know how it sounds. Abominable. But also know what the codicil would mean to most, and I… I could not fault you if you wished to be free.”
He said the last word, free, with such aching sincerity that for a heartbeat her anger waned. Then she remembered the codicil.
“You speak of my freedom, yet you had the power to change my whole life in a stroke of your quill, and you said nothing. Nothing, Mr. Ellison. You kept your silence even as you kissed me.” Her voice thinned.
“You let me believe your regard for me was untainted by… by avarice, when all the while you had a reason to treat me with such tenderness.”
“Phoebe, no. No.” He reached into his coat, hands fumbling, and pulled out folded paper. “I found your letter. I know what you believe, what you fear—that I am another Freddy, that I courted you for the sake of the codicil. You wrote—”
Her face flamed in rage and embarrassment. “You had no right to read that. It was not addressed to you.”
Pocketing the letter, he said quietly, “But it was addressed to me. Or rather, to the Earl of Collumby, which, in this unfortunate instance, amounts to the same person.”
She blinked. “I addressed it to the earl, not to you.”
His mouth twitched with rueful humor. “Yes, well. I am both.”
Silence fell, thick as fog.
“You are what?” she asked at last.
Cringing, he said, “I had hoped to unfold this part more delicately.”