Chapter 27 Rhys
Rhys
Won was a foreign word Rhys had notated long ago from a book on the Far East about a hermit kingdom called Korea. The word meant being unwilling to give up hope for a lost cause. He had been fascinated by the word because it was the same spelling as the past tense of to win.
Last week had been the bleakest of his life while he waited for updates from the Bow Street Runners.
When the driver of the carriage finally came out of hiding, after accepting his promise of coin, Rhys rode to the man’s village.
The driver was tearful and contrite. He had not been aware of any deception until the end.
He actually thought Magellan and Terrance Brighton were father and daughter.
The driver had been hired by Lord Erickson simply to deliver the pair to his estate by evening, although Terrance instructed the driver to take a roundabout route.
Whenever the driver stopped to take care of the horses, he asked Terrance if he or his daughter had need of anything. Terrance always said she was sleeping.
“The blinds were drawn, so I could not see inside.”
Rhys’s eyes burned as he listened to the driver describe how the last time he stopped, the carriage window was open. He peered inside to find Terrance unconscious with his face bloody and nose broken.
Rhys startled at that, for the first time feeling the faint stirrings of hope. Had Magellan fought him and gotten away?
“There was no one else in the carriage?”
“No, my lord.” The man swallowed.
Rhys forced himself to remain calm. “Then what happened?”
“I shook him awake and asked him what had occurred. He said his daughter attacked him and ran off.”
Rhys felt a rush of dizzying relief so strong he leaned forward and steadied himself—so she had escaped—but then the driver went on to say more.
“But I could tell he was lying. I saw the knife in his hand. All that blood. I demanded to know what happened. I’m a good citizen and would never turn a blind eye to something nefarious,” he insisted, though he had in fact been hiding for days.
“All that blood did not come from a man’s nose.
He still had the knife, or I would have chased him.
So I brought the carriage back round to Lord Erickson and told him what happened. ”
To Rhys, every word was like a dagger. Erickson, the bastard, had known the first night everything had gone wrong with his scheme and still he had done nothing to find Magellan.
Rhys glared at the man. “I need to know the exact route you took, where you watered the horses, where you discovered him unconscious. Every detail.”
Magellan had disappeared somewhere on the road between the driver’s two stopping points. Rhys would visit every home, inn, and tavern along the way.
The man gave him all the information he could. She was somewhere in Leicester. But was she alive? The question squeezed Rhys’s heart in a vise. Then a thought occurred to him. “When you found the man, was there a satchel of provisions with him?”
“No, sir, there was no satchel.”
“Are you sure? Did he have a book on his person? A small diary?”
The driver shook his head. “No, sir, nothing that I saw. Just the knife.”
Rhys was unsure whether to hope further. Magellan had to have escaped and taken the diary with her. She wouldn’t have left it behind. He ran his hands over his face, fighting the urge to cry, imagining what she had gone through. This was all his fault.
He paid the driver his coin and headed north to find the road the carriage had taken.
Riding hard, he finally reached the carriage’s first stopping point.
The proprietor had not seen anyone by Magellan’s description.
Rhys made his way up the road, knocking on every door to ask if they’d seen a wounded young woman in a brown traveling dress and offered her aid.
When he finally made it to the Hen House, the hour was late.
He was bone weary and ready to give up. He sat down at the bar to order supper and a large tankard of ale.
When he asked the woman behind the counter if she’d seen a wounded young lady in a brown dress last week, he expected the same answer he’d received all day.
To his astonishment, the woman leveled a savage look at him and demanded, “Were you the bastard who tried to kill her?”
At first Rhys could only stare at her dumbstruck. “She’s alive?” He leaned forward with urgency. “Madam, is she alive?”
The woman yelled to the kitchen. “Curtis!”
Suddenly a huge lumbering man appeared. With a growl, he grabbed Rhys’s neck with an iron grip and began to squeeze while the woman watched with a hardened gaze. “My boy loves nothing more than ta pummel bad men.”
Rhys struggled to get the words out, unable to breathe. “Wait! I’m trying to find her. To save her!” With both hands he tried to break the man’s grip before he passed out.
“You’re a bit late for that,” the woman snapped. “And I made her a promise not ta let anyone find her.” She nodded to Curtis to let him go.
Rhys fell back into his seat, gasping for air but not about to be deterred. “You don’t understand. I’ve been searching for her ever since . . .” He didn’t even know how to explain what happened. “I can pay for information.”
The woman’s eyebrows rose high. “I don’t want your money.”
“Please, I swear on my honor as a gentleman. I’ve been trying to find her to help her.” Rhys went to rise from his chair, and Curtis growled low in this throat. Still Rhys bowed. “The Earl of Liron, at your service.”
“An earl, is it?” She did not look impressed. “I don’t like seeing a woman harmed, and I don’t care for earls who allow it to happen. Best eat your food and be on your way.”
Thoroughly chastened, Rhys reluctantly sat back down and tried to remain calm. “How badly was she injured?” He forced the words out.
“She was damn near killed is what she was. The surgeon had to stitch her up.”
Rhys closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands. “Please, I beg you.” He was trying not to break down. He cleared his throat. “You cared for her?”
The woman nodded, studying him closely. “Kept her upstairs until she could walk again.”
“I will pay you handsomely if you take me to her.”
“I said I don’t want your money.” She scowled again, looking offended, and the woman’s son grumbled at her. She told him, “He may not have hurt her, but he had something to do with it, else how’d she end up wandering the road in the dead of the night alone and bleeding?”
Rhys winced. “May I see her? Please?”
“She’s no longer here.”
“What do you mean?” He shook his head in disbelief. “She left here wounded?”
“There was no keeping her. She was all bent to get to London.”
London! Magellan had not thought to send word to him?
But then why would she? he grimly thought.
She must hate him for what he’d done. She’d begged and pleaded with him and almost lost her life because of his mistake.
Now the thought of her wounded and heading to London filled him with a new kind of terror.
“You just sent her on her way, all alone, to London?” he demanded. The son made a grunt of warning, but Rhys was beyond caring. Let the big lug try to take him down.
The woman smarted at the accusation. “She went with my niece and nephews! They’re all together.”
Nephews? She was traveling with strange men? “How can I find them?”
A guarded look came over her eyes. “Ya can’t.”
“Then I believe we’re at an impasse. I’m not leaving here until you tell me.
I have a whole team of Bow Street Runners searching for her as we speak.
” He saw the woman’s eyes widen. “If I must get the chief magistrate here to question you, I will. I personally know the man.” The woman gasped at the threat, but Rhys wasn’t above making one.
He was desperate. “I’ll even offer assistance to your niece and nephews when I locate them. ”
The woman’s son nudged her. “Ma, they did leave with little coin.”
That news only made Rhys’s worry grow. What was Magellan thinking going off to London by herself with a group of strangers?
The woman finally relented. “They’ve gone to a music competition.”
Now Rhys was the one who wanted to growl. A music competition? He pinched the bridge of his nose. Only Magellan.
“My niece and nephews call themselves the Lucky Horseshoes. They’re quite talented,” she said with pride. “There’s a hefty purse for the winner.”
“Where is this competition?”
“Covent Garden. Next week.”
Covent Garden was one of London’s most notorious neighborhoods, chock-full of brothels, theatres, and coffeehouses.
The thought of Magellan heading there left his stomach rolling.
Tomorrow morning, after a few hours’ sleep, he would set out early to London and start scouring the neighborhood.
If he got back on his horse tonight, he might fall off.
He reached into his purse and pulled out a generous number of coins, more than enough to pay for a week’s lodging.
“Thank you for taking care of her,” he said.
Both the woman and her son’s eyes widened at the amount.
“I insist I reimburse you for your kindness. And may I have a room for the night? Her room?” He needed to be where she had slept, if only to be closer to her.
The woman nodded and took him upstairs to the room where Magellan had stayed. Rhys looked around at the spartan space and touched the mattress.
He asked the question he had been dreading. “What were the extent of her wounds?”
“Two knife wounds. A savage one down her arm and another on her leg. The fevers almost took her, but the girl is a fighter. A strong lass. I hope ya find her in London and see that she’s well.”
“I will. I swear it.”
“I wouldn’t have let her go, but she said it was urgent she get there before the lady she’s seeking left.”
It took a moment for her words to sink in. “What lady? Did she say who?”
“Some lady musician she needed to meet. Said it was a matter of life or death.”
Rhys closed his eyes in disbelief. Magellan was going to London to find Felix Mendelssohn’s sister.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Magellan was still entrenched in the diary.
But at this point he didn’t care if she told him it was possible to fly to the moon and back.
Ever since he found her in the labyrinth, their lives had become entwined.
He could no longer fight the reality she held his heart in her hands, and nothing, nothing, not even a thousand-year-old diary, would change that fact.