Chapter 37
It was only as they reached the next field that Jasper noticed Marchmont cutting away from the pack and angling his horse towards the wood.
He watched as Lottie followed, her bright blue habit vanishing between the trees.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jasper muttered.
Morleigh caught the movement a moment later. “Where?”
Jasper pointed. “There. Into the copse.”
The duke swore. It was an impressive oath, particularly from a man who generally dispensed profanity with the same reserve he applied to affection.
Jasper had already turned his horse.
Morleigh caught his bridle before he could give the animal its head. “Wait.”
Jasper looked at the duke’s hand upon his reins, then at the duke. “You have three seconds to explain why you still possess fingers.”
Morleigh’s expression did not alter. “If we thunder after her now, we do precisely what I have done before.”
Jasper went still, for the words struck with appalling accuracy.
He saw, unwillingly, the story as Charlotte must have lived it: men bursting in, men deciding, men removing her, men concealing the evidence of scandal while never quite pausing to ask whether scandal was the proper name for it.
Marchmont had committed the wrong. Lottie had borne the consequence.
And every man who cared for her had, in his own way, placed one more lock upon the door.
Jasper’s stomach turned. “He has her alone in the woods.”
“And she chose to follow him.”
“That is not comforting at all, Morleigh!”
“No,” Morleigh replied. “It is not.”
The hounds cried ahead, sweeping the field to the east. Riders passed them in a bright blur, laughing, calling, wholly ignorant of the miserable little drama tightening at the edge of the wood.
Jasper’s hands clenched upon the reins. He could see nothing now but the dark mouth of the copse.
“She may be trying to learn what he holds over her,” Morleigh said.
Jasper looked at him, grinding his teeth.
The duke’s jaw was set, his gaze fixed upon the trees. “You said it yourself. She is not a child to be dragged from danger whenever we dislike the look of it.”
“I’ve said many foolish things! I ought not to be held to all of them!”
“You were right, Deverell. We cannot cage her, and we cannot be her saviours.”
Jasper gritted his teeth and nodded, and Morleigh’s fingers released the bridle.
They waited, for a time that was perhaps only thirty seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. Jasper heard his own pulse. He heard the horses breathing.
Then, from within the trees, came the sharp crack of a whip.
A horse screamed, and so did a woman.
Jasper did not remember setting his heels to his horse.
One moment he was waiting; the next he and Morleigh were thundering into the copse hard enough that branches lashed at his face and tore at his coat.
The path twisted left, narrowed, plunged beneath a net of black boughs.
His horse slipped once in the mud and recovered.
Behind him, Morleigh swore again, louder this time.
“Charlotte!” Jasper shouted.
There was only silence.
Jasper broke into the clearing first, and for a breath, he understood nothing.
Lottie stood near the centre of the clearing, one hand clamped around several folded letters. Her riding crop hung from the other. Her hat was gone, and so was her horse.
Beyond her, at the edge of the chalk pit, the bramble had been torn open. A grey horse stood riderless several yards away, trembling violently, its reins dragging through the mud.
Jasper dismounted before his horse had quite stopped. “Charlotte.”
She only looked straight through him, and that terrified him more than words. What had happened? And where the devil was Marchmont?
Morleigh went at once to the broken edge, and Jasper did not need to ask, for the duke’s face answered.
“I hit him,” said Charlotte very quietly, and then she ran.