Chapter 21 #2
Orson stopped near the desk, his eyes darting to the floor in deep thought.
“I cannot give you a certain answer on that, Roman. I don’t think anyone alive can, save for the person who wrapped it around the girl.
Perhaps old Preston bought it at a London market years ago.
Perhaps it was a random piece of cloth he acquired by chance.
There are a dozen ways an old shawl could change hands over thirty years.
It is a strange detail, certainly, but it changes nothing about what we know of the child’s lineage. She is a Gainsborough.”
Roman tightened his grip on the window latch. He stared out into the courtyard, his mind spinning. The shawl remained a ghost in the ledger, an untied thread that refused to neatly align with the rest of the facts. But there was no time to chase a piece of decades-old wool. Not now.
“Where did the carriage take them?” Roman asked, his hand already moving to the silver bell on the desk.
Orson sighed, rubbing his temples. “Lady Daphne told the household she had ordered her own stable brougham to convey them to the coaching inn at the county border. I was not there to hear the exchange, but Ames told me Lady Daphne called it a charity. She said it would save the estate the scandal of the beadle, and that they would be dropped safely at the turnpike.”
“A charity,” Roman repeated, the word tasting like copper on his tongue.
He did not wait for the footman to answer the bell. He strode across the study, throwing the doors open with a force that made the brass handles ring against the panels.
He did not look for his mother in the breakfast room. He did not look for Lady Daphne in the gardens. He pulled his heavy riding coat from the peg in the hall, his fingers clenching into the thick wool as he hauled it over his shoulders.
“Order the gray stallion,” Roman shouted down the kitchen stairs, his voice echoing off the stone flags below like a pistol shot. “And tell Orson to have the light phaeton followed behind me. Now!”
The ridge road was a long, muddy track that cut through the limestone cliffs where the gorse grew wild and black from the salt wind. Roman rode without mercy, his boots dug deep into the stirrup irons, the gray stallion’s flanks covered in a thick, white foam as they tore through the wet ditches.
The rain had begun again, a thin, driving needle-mist that blatted against his face and turned the wool of his coat to a sodden, heavy weight. His inner thoughts were a single, repetitive beat that matched the rhythmic strike of the hooves.
Please be there…
He had spent his life balancing books, verifying yields, and ensuring that no part of the Langley estate fell into disorder.
He had treated the nursery like a ledger entry that needed a proper clerk.
He had been a coward with a title, and the realization was a deeper burn than any stone or iron could give.
The coaching inn at the border was a long, low structure of black timbers and whitewashed stone, sitting in a hollow where the three western turnpikes met. The yard was crowded with heavy broad-wheeled wagons, the horses standing head-to-tail under the dripping thatch of the sheds.
Roman ground the stallion to a halt near the mounting block, throwing the reins to a startled stable-boy before his boots hit the wet gravel. He pushed through the low oak door of the taproom, his shoulder striking the frame as he stepped into the heat of the interior.
The air inside smelled of stale small beer, wet wool, and fried bacon.
The innkeeper, a short man with a greasy leather apron and an eye that had been flattened by a stray stone, was wiping the counter. When he saw the silver buttons on Roman’s coat and the cold look on his face, the rag stopped mid-stroke.
"Your Grace," the man stammered, his head dropping into a hasty, awkward nod. "We did not expect... the York stage is not due until the afternoon, sir."
Roman stopped two paces from the bar, his hand resting flat against the dark oak, his breath coming in long, heavy heaves. "A green brougham, from the Vane stables. Two bays in the traces. It would have arrived here after the fourth hour of the morning."
The innkeeper looked down at his rag, his brow wrinkling with a genuine, slow confusion. "A green brougham, sir? From the hall?"
"A woman was inside," Roman said, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying whisper that made the teamsters by the fire turn their heads. "A young woman in a grey gown, carrying an infant wrapped in a yellow blanket. She was to be left here for the common stage to the south."
The innkeeper slowly shook his head, his grease-stained hand coming up to scratch the side of his neck.
"No, Your Grace. No such carriage has passed the gate today. We’ve had nothing since the dawn but the carrier’s wagon from the western peat-moss and two riders from the lime-kilns.
A private coach like that... well, my boy would have seen it from the stables, sir. It’s a quiet morning on the road."
Roman stood perfectly still in the center of the low room.
The smell of the stale beer and the grease seemed to vanish, replaced by a sudden, thin vacuum that left his ears ringing.
He looked past the innkeeper’s shoulder to the window that faced the southern turnpike.
The road was empty, a long, gray ribbon of mud disappearing into the mist of the high moors.
Lady Daphne had arranged the carriage through her own stable. She had told the staff she was sending them to safety, giving them a chance to disappear into the common crowds of the southern valleys.
A kindness, she had called it.
Roman’s hand slid from the counter, his fingers curling into a fist so tight the skin across his knuckles turned the color of river stone. He understood it now.
She had taken the child that didn't exist, and the woman who could prove her a liar, and she had dropped them into a deeper ditch than any he had ever dug.