Chapter 3 #2
When he turned around, he found Pickworth at his elbow. “That’s Lady Loughton,” he said in a low voice. “You sly… Elliot told me about the wager.”
Swallowing the urge to bash the lad, he leaned close until Pickworth’s eyes stopped glittering.
Ah, the power of a steely glare.
“Yes. Hold your tongue, there’s a good lad. When a lady needs assistance, a gentleman helps her. He doesn’t gamble on her virtue. He doesn’t slander her good reputation. If he is a gentleman.”
He watched the color flash darker in the younger man’s face and then drain under Lindhorst’s merciless stare.
He hadn’t noticed Pickworth there. Might he have also missed James and Gordon?
“There’s no need for us to quarrel and be required to meet, Pickworth. You’re the least knackered of any fellow I’ve seen today. Did you attend the mill?”
Pickworth rubbed his throat as if Lindhorst had actually grabbed it, and nodded.
“Did you see two young lads, about fourteen or fifteen in the crowd?”
“No.” Pickworth’s brows furrowed. “Not of the gentry sort, not that I noticed. Wasn’t that big of a crowd that I’d have missed them though.”
“And you’re the sort to notice things. Well. Not a word about the lady, or her son. Or me, for that matter.”
It was hopeless of course. Pickworth would tell his brother, and the news would be all over town.
Seeing that Jasper had stowed the food basket inside the coach, Lindhorst clamped his hat down tighter and strode to his horse, thinking.
Perhaps they ought to have searched the stables at each inn to see if they’d taken shelter in the hayloft.
But no, likely someone would have seen them there, and he couldn’t imagine Gordon making do with straw bedding unless he absolutely had to.
The letter had been delayed. Perhaps they’d changed their minds and returned to their school or gone on to…
where? Not Loughton Manor, or else Neda wouldn’t be searching.
Not his own estate in Bedfordshire. There was a place much closer where they might have taken refuge, one he’d brought Gordon to during the school break.
A blast of rain stung his cheeks, driven along on a bone chilling wind.
Neda might not like it, but they’d have to stop, to spend the night under the same shabby roof, and without much in the way of staff to serve them. They simply couldn’t go on in this weather.
* * *
Lindhorst’s mount and buckskin-clad legs passed Neda’s coach window, and she heard his rumbling exchange with Martin, though she couldn’t make out a word of what was said. Perhaps he was giving directions to the Wild Stag.
Oh, but this was Lindhorst. Anything was possible with him. What was this other place he was talking about?
She pulled the carriage rug around herself and settled back—frazzled, fuming, and altogether frantic. Also freezing. She could read the weather signs—snow would be coming soon, but before the white blanket fell, this rain would turn to ice. And James was somewhere out there in it.
She sent up a silent prayer. James wasn’t her worst-behaved son—that honor had been earned by her eldest, Fitz. The tangles Fitz had got himself into hurt her heart. His father had pushed him into a marriage at too young of an age to a very pretty girl who was completely wrong for him.
And before that, the drinking, gambling, and…
She shook her head. He’d kept an actress as a mistress, a secret that all his brothers and even his sisters seemed to know about.
During his first marriage, like the other fashionables, including Lindhorst, Fitz had dabbled in adultery.
He’d neglected his first wife and baby daughter.
It was no wonder Alice had cheated on him with a scoundrel.
Lindhorst had been part of the crowd Fitz ran with in those days. A much older member of the crowd, and a terrible influence. In public, she was courteous to him; in her heart, she’d never been able to forgive him.
Whatever help Lindhorst gave her today would no doubt come with unpleasant strings attached.
Or… What perhaps made her the wariest: those strings might not be unpleasant at all.
She’d been widowed for two years. Her vows to Henry had been her armor against temptation; but now he was gone.
Handsome, well-spoken, rich… and now widowed himself, Lindhorst was much in demand by society hostesses and mamas looking for husbands for their daughters.
Mamas who had no thought to the wretchedness of their girls being mismatched with an older man whose inconsiderate neglect had driven his late wife to run off to Paris where she’d succumbed to a fatal illness.
The firmly muscled, buckskin-clad legs appeared in her window again, and she gritted her teeth. She wasn’t indifferent to men; she just wasn’t free yet. She had responsibilities to the two boys still left. Thank heavens her youngest, Edward was as sensible as…
She would have said Nancy, except memories of her youngest daughter’s antics at the Midsummer’s Eve party flooded her.
She leaned back again. Lindhorst had fixed himself by her window, the gentle gait of his mount keeping pace with the coach.
Her son George said that Lindhorst had changed. Was that possible? Might she trust him? In truth, she had very little choice now but to do so.
Letting down the window, she poked her head out and the freezing rain stabbed her. Martin and Jasper and the horses must be miserable. “Where are we going? We must stop soon.”
“We will,” Lindhorst called down. “Do not worry. I know this country.”
She closed the window in frustration and huddled deeper into her lap rug. If only one of her sons, Fitz, or George, or Rupert, or Selwyn were here. If only it was one of them riding alongside her carriage and telling her not to worry.
The coach turned onto a lane and despite their slow pace the rear wheels skidded, the carriage body bobbled and then righted itself. The rain must be turning to ice.
They rolled on a bit further and with a loud crack the coach fishtailed and listed right. The horses shrieked, Martin cursed, she grabbed for the hand strap, and as if in a bad dream, heard herself scream.