Chapter 4
“Iam going to say this once more, and I want you to hear it properly.” Henry leaned forward, closing the small distance between them until his voice dropped to a low rasp meant strictly for her ears.
“If anyone on this road identifies you, the consequences will extend well beyond your own comfort. They will reach me. They will reach my business. They will reach Nathan’s estate and the situation I am already struggling to contain. Do you understand?”
His nearness made her shrink back into her seat, and she seemed to be holding her breath. “Yes,” she said.
“Then we are in agreement.”
“We are entirely in agreement,” she said pleasantly.
He sat back. She was lying, or she was planning something, or she had agreed because she thought he would stop talking sooner if she did. Possibly all three. He filed it away and settled back onto the plump cushions.
The carriage continued moving.
The roads improved for the first hour and then stopped. Ditches grew wide, trails became rocky, and more than once, Henry was jostled so hard that he had to support himself by pressing both hands against the roof of the cab.
By midday, exhaustion had begun to take hold of them. Henry had a folder of correspondence open across his knee and was achieving little with it, mostly because the carriage was swaying badly enough to make his writing look like a sailor’s diary.
He took a moment to observe Lady Charlotte on the opposite bench. Neither spoke. She was keeping her word, which was either reassuring or ominous. She had produced a small, battered book from somewhere in her coat and was reading, seemingly determined to ignore their surroundings.
The roads grew worse as they pressed north. The inns, too, changed character. The Swan at Biggleswade had been a respectable establishment with proper parlors and a landlord who knew what a duke expected.
The next two stops were smaller affairs, stone-fronted and smoky, their yards full of drovers and the smell of wet hay. Henry kept the stops efficient. Fresh horses, no lingering, no private rooms. He did his business at the door and returned.
Lady Charlotte’s book did not move from her hands at any of them.
He was impressed.
* * *
Kirkfield was the largest market town they had passed through since leaving Bedfordshire.
It sat at a crossroads, busy with midweek trade, its coaching inn considerably more active than those in the villages before it.
The yard was thick with noise and horses, and a chalkboard near the taproom door listed four departures before nightfall.
Henry had the carriage pull to the far side of the yard, away from the main bustle. He climbed out, then turned back to the window.
“A magistrate by the name of Alderton has been coordinating the search for the Drummonds across this part of the country. He sent word last week that he had information. I am going inside to speak with him.” He kept his voice low. “That is the reason for the stop.”
“I understand,” she said.
“You will remain here.”
“Yes.”
“You will not open the door.”
“I said yes.”
“I mean it.”
She looked up from her book. “And I answered you. Twice. Go and speak to your magistrate.”
Henry held her gaze for a moment longer than was necessary, turned, and crossed the yard.
Alderton was a broad-shouldered man with a methodical manner and the particular look of a local official who had been busy producing extraordinarily little results. He met Henry in a private sitting room off the main hallway, a map spread across the table between them.
“I am glad you’ve come in person, Your Grace.” He pressed a finger to the map. “We’ve had reports. A carriage matching the Drummond description was seen on the road north of Keswick, perhaps three weeks ago. The driver was asking directions to a drovers’ track that cuts east before the border.”
“Three weeks,” Henry said. “That puts them well ahead of any search party.”
“It does. But it also means they were moving under their own power, which is a better sign than the alternative.”
“Was there a woman in the carriage?”
“One report says yes. Another says the carriage was empty of passengers when the driver stopped to water the horses. Hard to know which to credit.” Alderton straightened. “I am sorry. I wish I had more.”
“You have enough to indicate a direction.” Henry moved the folder of papers aside and studied the map. “They were heading east before the border. Not directly to the estate.”
“Which may mean they were avoiding the main roads. Deliberately.”
Henry traced the line with one finger. “Or they were being followed and they knew it.”
Alderton said nothing, which was an answer of its own.
“What names can you give me?” Henry asked. “People who may know more as I go further north.”
Alderton reached into his coat and produced a folded paper.
“Three men. A drover who works that eastern track regularly. A landowner in Cumberland who keeps in close correspondence with the Scottish border posts. And a woman in Carlisle who runs the largest coaching inn on the northern route. She knows everyone who passes through.” He tapped the paper.
“She is the most useful of the three. Nothing moves on that road that she does not know about.”
Henry pocketed the paper. “I am obliged to you.”
“I hope you find them well.” Alderton rolled the map with careful hands. “It is not a forgiving stretch of country, that route. Not in this stormy weather.”
“No,” Henry said. “It is not.”
He shook the man’s hand, made his farewells, and walked back to the waiting carriage.
Twenty minutes.
Charlotte had lasted twenty minutes, which was, she decided, considerably more than she would’ve imagined possible.
The carriage had grown warm in a stuffy way, and the yard outside was alive with noise. Horses stamped. Ostlers called across to each other. A cart owner unloaded barrels with a great deal of enthusiasm and little consideration for the peace of anyone nearby.
She had tried the book. The book was not helping. The same four-line stanza had drifted in and out of her head four times without leaving any impression.
I only wish to stretch my legs, she told herself. I’m wearing plain clothes. This is a busy yard. No one will give a second glance at a valet’s boy.
She slipped out of the carriage and crossed toward the far end of the yard, keeping her cap low and her pace unhurried. It was a good yard, well-trafficked. Exactly the sort of place where an additional person was invisible.
She was wrong about that.
The man near the stable block did not look at her the way other people looked at strangers. He looked at her the way someone looks at a thing they have been asked to find.
Charlotte kept walking. She did not look directly at him again, but she had already seen what she needed to: well-dressed, not a drover, not a merchant.
The kind of clothes that said London and said it quietly.
He shifted his coat as he moved, and for one second, she caught the edge of a folded paper tucked against his side.
Her pulse thudded.
She turned away from the stable block and walked toward the outbuildings on the far side of the yard.
He followed.
She kept her head down and her shoulders back, the way Edith had taught her and told herself that she was imagining it. She was not imagining it.
“A moment, if you please.” His voice was pleasant. His eyes, when she turned, were not. “I am looking for a young lady. Perhaps you have seen her. Brown hair, about your height—"
“I am a valet,” Charlotte said. She pushed the words out low and flat. “Traveling with my master.”
“Your master.” He smiled. “And who might that be?”
“He is engaged inside.” She took a step back. “I beg your pardon; I have an errand.”
She turned and walked faster, angling through the gap between two outbuildings. The passage was narrow, the cobblestones uneven, and she was moving quickly enough that when her foot caught the edge of a raised stone, she had no time to catch herself.
She went down hard. Both hands and one knee hit the stones, and the ankle folded sideways in a way that sent a bright stab of pain straight up her leg.
Charlotte sat up. She pressed her lips together, breathed through her nose, and got to her feet.
She could not move at anything approaching normal speed.
Oh, that is inconvenient.
The man had stopped at the entrance to the passage. He was watching her, and the pleasant expression had gone entirely.
And then Sappherton was there.
She did not see him come. He was simply not present, and then he was there, stepping into the passage to put himself between Charlotte and the man without any apparent effort at all.
“Is there a problem here?” he said to the man in the voice Charlotte had heard him use with the driver. Perfectly civil.
The man looked at him. Then at the crest on the carriage at the far end of the yard. His expression shifted.
“I was merely—”
“My valet’s boy,” Sappherton said, “has been running a series of errands on my behalf this last quarter-hour. I trust he has caused no commotion.” He let the pause land.
“I am Sappherton. If you have any further questions about my household’s arrangements, I would be glad to hear them.
Though I confess I cannot imagine what they might be. ”
The man stepped back. “No, Your Grace. My apologies.”
He was gone before Charlotte had finished registering that it was over.
Sappherton turned. He looked at her ankle, then at her face, and said nothing at all, which was almost worse than if he had spoken. He put a hand on her elbow, helped her to stand, and walked her across the yard without saying another word.
The carriage door shut behind them.
Once they were alone, the Duke spoke. “At what point,” Sappherton said, “during the instructions I gave you not twenty minutes ago, did you conclude they were suggestions?”
Charlotte’s ankle was throbbing steadily. “I was managing perfectly well.”
“You were on the ground.”
“I had tripped. That is entirely separate from the other situation.”
“The other situation being the hired agent who was two questions away from identifying you.”
“I handled that.”
“You told him you were a valet,” he said. “He did not believe you.”
“He had no proof—”
“He had eyes.” Sappherton sat across from her, arms folded. “If I had been five minutes longer in that room, he would have walked you to the nearest posting house and sent a rider south before nightfall.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I know exactly that.”
Charlotte straightened. “Sitting in a sealed carriage while you conduct business is not a plan. It is a cage. I cannot be expected to—”
“You were given one instruction.”
“A deeply unreasonable one.”
“The alternative,” he said, “was a sprained ankle and a hired man memorizing your face. Which of those outcomes do you prefer?”
Charlotte opened her mouth. Then she closed it.
His jaw was still set, but he was already moving, dropping from the seat to one knee on the carriage floor. He had her boot in his hands before she fully understood what was happening.
“What are you doing?”
“Examining your ankle.” He worked the boot free with careful hands, one thumb pressed light against the joint. She felt him assess it by applying a pressure that told her he knew what he was looking for and had handled similar injuries in the past.
The Duke removed one hand from her ankle and used his knuckles to rap on the roof. A moment later the carriage door opened and his valet, who had been riding outside, handed in a traveling case. Sappherton extracted a strip of clean linen without looking up.
Charlotte watched him wrap the ankle. His hands were steady. He did not rush.
“It is a sprain,” he said. “Not a break.”
“You sound very certain of that.”
“I have seen enough of both to know the difference.”
She had run out of things to say. The argument had gone somewhere she hadn’t intended, and now he was crouched on the floor of his own carriage wrapping her ankle, and she could not quite locate the indignation she’d had five minutes ago.
“You are considerably more worried about me and my well-being,” she said, “than you have been letting on.”
He did not look up. “Your safety is a concern. I would prefer not to arrive in Scotland with a woman who cannot walk.”
“That is a very practical way of describing what you just did out there.”
Henry eased her boot back into place and smoothed the protective linen wrap beneath her cuff. “You are not to put weight on it for the remainder of the day.”
Charlotte looked down at her neatly bound ankle, then up at his stern, unyielding features. "Thank you," she said softly.
With a slight nod, Sappherton rose, moved to his own seat, and picked up the correspondence he had left on the bench.
Charlotte settled back against the squabs and opened her book. She found the same stanza she had read four times in the yard and read it a fifth time without taking in a single word.
Over the edge of the page, she watched him. He had claimed that his helping her was guided solely by cold, unfeeling practicality. Yet he’d dropped to his knees to bind her ankle, which made that claim rather difficult to believe.
She filed that thought away as something worth understanding.