Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
“Goodness, what a crush.” Rebecca was furiously fanning herself as Gabriella and Rose followed her into Peachornsby’s main ballroom. It wasn’t just a crush. It was suffocatingly hot despite the chilly autumn weather outside.
The chandeliers were ablaze with a thousand points of light that indeed sprouted a line of dampness along Rose’s forehead.
Thankfully, her hair hid this unsightly line.
She thought she might faint if she didn’t get air.
“Will Sebastian and Huntley be joining us tonight?” she asked, surveying the crowd.
Only, she wasn’t looking for her brother or brother-in-law.
Annoyingly, she found herself searching for a tall, less than gentlemanly individual, even though she was furious with him for treating her like a child.
One shouldn’t be treated as a child when one wore a gown of the softest midnight velvet studded with diamonds throughout and a bodice that exposed far more than was proper for a woman who was supposed to be in mourning.
“Of course,” Rebecca said.
It took Rose a second to recall her own question on whether Sebastian would be joining them. She had her doubts Rebecca’s delicate fan would survive the evening.
“The thought has my feet aching,” she went on. “Sebastian is under strict instruction to take only one dance with me tonight, and only after I’ve had, at the least, one glass of punch. Appropriately spiked, I hope.”
Gabriella laughed. “Our brother never follows instructions. You know that.”
Rose ignored the light bantering with a faint smile. Gabriella and Rebecca could trade barbs about their husbands all evening, but she had other matters on her mind.
“I’m sure Huntley hasn’t yet arrived,” Gabriella said. “He had a meeting with Liverpool that notoriously runs late.”
“When have they never ran late?” Rebecca asked. “You married the most industrious man in England.”
A graceful shrug lifted Gabriella’s shoulder. “At least I always know where he is. Usually.”
They both laughed.
Rose nodded politely, her fingers tightening around her own fan dangling from her wrist. The ball was already beginning to blur—silks and lace and cravats in endless motion—but all she could think of was Peachornsby’s study. Unfortunately, she possessed no talent for opening a concealed strongbox.
“What on earth has you so preoccupied, Rose?” Gabriella’s teasing voice broke through her thoughts, and Rose could feel her face grow warm.
“I’ve no idea your meaning,” she said in a lame attempt of nonchalance.
“Well, whoever you were thinking of, by that scowl you’ve affected, I wouldn’t care to be in his shoes when you run into him,” Gabriella said with a sly smile.
Rebecca laughed.
Rose ignored them and glanced toward the far side of the ballroom to a grand staircase, where the retiring rooms were located. She had only to skirt Lady Ingleby and her companions—notorious gossips—Ladies Gorman and Lockhart to make her escape complete.
“I just need a moment,” Rose murmured to Gabriella and Rebecca.
“Don’t be long,” the duchess said. “If Sebastian appears before you return, I shall never hear the end of it.”
Rose smiled faintly, turning away and making her way up the stairs to a corridor that was blissfully quiet and cool.
Here, the music was muffled by distance.
Inside the ladies’ retiring room, she crossed to a washbasin, dipped a cloth, then damped it to her forehead.
Goodness, that felt good. She found her way to a chair that offered a modicum of privacy and sat down—mostly to bolster her courage.
She drummed her fingers on the arm and ran through her stratagem.
It entailed finding the study, slipping inside, and attempting to uncover some hint of what or who Emerson was looking for.
Whether he realized it or not, he needed her help.
Her blood boiled at his utter arrogance at stating otherwise.
Rose came to her feet with a new determination, but—
Voices.
Faint. Low. From the adjoining sitting room. Rose failed in recognizing them. They were young, she guessed.
“Not even out yet. Just disappeared. I overheard Papa talking to Mama—”
“You and your eavesdropping, Theo. I vow it will be your downfall,” her companion chastised. Then, she added, “Well, are you going to tell me what you heard?”
Ah, Lady Theodosia. Lady Faulk’s granddaughter. Another incorrigible gossip of the ton, next to Lady Ingleby. The other chit must be Miss Nancy Quincton, then. The two were thick as thieves.
Theodosia giggled. “He believes that her aunt cast her out. Right onto the street with nothing more than the clothes on her back.”
Miss Quincton gasped. “I-I don’t believe it!”
A chill stole up Rose’s spine, lifted her hair.
“Then she just disappeared.” Theodosia’s voice was brittle with scorn. “That old biddy, Lockhart. Someone should run her through with their carriage at top speed.”
“How could Viola have just disappeared?”
Rose could practically hear Theodosia’s shrug.
“Who would notice but girls such as us? She hadn’t even been presented yet. I suspect her aunt sold her for the blunt. Why else would she not have been presented? Because the gown was too costly, I daresay.”
A pause.
“But where could she have gone?”
“Don’t you have any imagination at all, Nancy? She’s been scooped up by now and likely dropped into the nearest bawdy house. Viola, that pretentious little prig, could never survive the streets.”
“Well, I think we should try to find her. The streets are no place for a young lady.” Nancy’s concern was touching.
It was Theodosia’s reply that stunned Rose. “I doubt she’s a lady by now.”
The temptation to step forward and slap that silly Theodosia’s face and shove her into the street reeled through Rose. She needed to reach Gabriella and Rebecca. Tell them.
“Papa thinks that steward of Lady Lockhart’s arranged the entire plot. He said something about rooms in Whitefriars. But I had to slip away before I was caught with my ear against the door.”
“This is awful, Theo. Absolutely horrid.”
Theodosia’s voice lowered. “We should be glad for our own safety, Nancy. Stay out of matters that don’t concern us.”
Rose had heard enough. She desperately wanted to find Emerson, but there was no time.
Whitefriars wasn’t all that far away. She could instruct her own driver to take her.
No one need ever know she was about. She waited for the girls to leave, but more voices entered the retiring room, trapping her momentarily.
Thankfully, with the new visitors, Nancy and Theodosia made their exit, and Rose stepped from her small sanctuary.
“Oh, hello, Rose,” Maeve said.
“Good evening, Maeve, Lady Brockway.” Rose smiled.
“Don’t you think it’s time you called me Ginny, Lady Stanford?” A conspiratorial glint lit her eyes.
Warmth blossomed through Rose. “Absolutely, Ginny. And you must call me Rose.” She turned to the mirror, certain her appearance had fallen into disrepair, matching her chaotic insides. But no. Her hair remained what it was—a riot of perfectly placed curls.
“What a lovely gown, Rose. I think even I could pull off that shade,” Maeve said, grinning. Her ginger-colored hair and myriad freckles were fetching. Mostly, Rose believed, due to her engaging personality.
“I thought it wise not to keep flaunting my recent widowhood.” Her nose wrinkled. “I mean, in my refusal to remain home, the matrons literally twitter when I saunter by.”
Joint laughter ensued before Rose made her escape back to the ballroom to locate her sister, but both Gabriella and Rebecca were being twirled about the parquet floor by their husbands. She sent for her brother’s carriage and, while waiting, penned a quick note to Rebecca, claiming an aching head.
Taking the duke’s carriage to Whitefriars was out of the question, so she instructed him to her own home and opted to hail a hackney—she didn’t trust Winston to secrecy. Pulling her dark cloak tighter about her, she gave the driver a false address before rerouting mid-journey—on her own terms.
~~~
Emerson strolled—though the effort not to storm nearly flayed him—down the street to the corner of Peachornsby’s east wing, his breath fogging in the chilled night.
The borrowed coat Ben had forced on him was stiff across his shoulders.
Music drifted from the ballroom like the faint mist in the air.
He approached the servants’ entrance and found his brother pacing about like a madman fit for Bedlam, his face flushed, hair askew—quite un-Ben-like.
Ben caught sight of him and pulled up. “Thank God,” he breathed. “You’re late.”
Emerson ground his boots against the gravel, his chest tightening as if waiting for a blow. “What happened?”
Ben looked about before answering, lowering his voice. “She’s gone. Lady Stanford.”
Ice congealed Emerson’s blood. The kind of cold that had nothing to do with the weather.
“She left the ballroom. I followed until I realized she was headed to the ladies’ retiring room,” Ben went on.
“I waited for her near the library. But she never emerged. By the time I strolled back to the ballroom, I saw her bound for the entryway. I fought my way through the crowd, but I was too late. She’d disappeared. ”
“She didn’t speak to Her Grace or Lady Huntley?”
Ben raked a hand through his hair. “No. They were occupied on the dance floor. With their husbands!” He sounded so appalled that Emerson might have managed a laugh if worry wasn’t choking him so. “I fear you were right—she’s taking matters into her own hands.”
Emerson didn’t wait for more. He turned on his heel and ran back to the street, boots skidding slightly as he cut around the stone path and past the colonnade, where a line of carriages sat idle.
His breath steamed in the cold, heart pounding a ruthless rhythm.
It was a devil’s snarl of rigs and horses, harness bells sounding.
A thousand directions and he couldn’t find one clear path to find her.
The crunch of wheels ground over the drive. Then he saw it…Ryleigh’s ducal carriage clearing the gates, rolling its way into the night. There was a faint flutter of a cloak as the rig turned the corner—Rose, vanishing into the dark like a ghost he couldn’t grasp.
Damn her.
No, damn him. He’d known she would attempt her own uprising. Telling her it was too dangerous had been like waving a red cape before her lovely green eyes.
Ben stumbled to a halt beside him, panting. “Where the devil do you suppose she’s gone?”
Emerson didn’t answer. He was already calculating. She’d taken the duke’s carriage—no, not all the way. She was too clever for that. If she’d overheard anything of value tonight, she would act on it. Alone. “Did she arrive with the duchess and Lady Huntley?”
“They entered together. By the time they arrived, the ballroom was stifling with people.”
“My guess,” Emerson said, thinking through his logic aloud, “is that she’ll have to send the carriage back for them. She’s going home.”
“Shall I accompany you?”
Emerson stopped, peering at his brother through the gloom. “Stay close to the upstarts. See if they say anything. I have to go after Lady Stanford.”
“All right.” Ben melted from sight, and Emerson dashed for the gates.
On foot.
God help whoever stood in her way.
The hair on his nape stood on end. And God help him if he didn’t find her.