There was a brief startled silence, broken by the squeak of Georgiana’s hastily stifled laugh.
Arthur glowered. “For Christ’s sake. I showed you on the ramparts what the scope can do. You could be hurt. I wouldn’t… I would not have you hurt again by me or mine.”
“I know,” she said. “I understand. But I believe…”
She could not put it into words—what she thought, what she wanted. She struggled a moment, trying for speech, and Arthur—
Waited. He waited patiently for her, his hazel eyes resting upon her face.
This is your chance to change your life, she had told herself, and then lied to her family and set out for Scotland.
It had been an unqualified disaster. She’d proposed to a literal stranger, had been quite squarely rejected upon the basis that they wereliteral strangers, had nearly been run over by a herd of zebras, and had gotten herself involved in the theft of experimental weaponry. She had hoped, in her most optimistic fantasies, that this trip would end with her happily settled into a marriage of convenience with a man who respected her and her ideas, who appreciated the wealth and political connections she could bring to their marriage.
That happy outcome was, it went without saying, not to be.
And yet… and yet…
Was it not still possible for her to change? Was this not a chance for her todosomething—to thrust herself into the world instead of hiding from it, to take action instead of waiting fruitlessly for a life that never quite seemed to begin?
“I believe I can help you,” she said finally. “I cannot write to him from here—the postal mark will be unmistakable if it comes from the vicinity of Strathrannoch Castle. He will know I camehere, know I spoke to you and discovered the truth of his identity. But I could leave a note for him at Haddon Grange. I can ask after him, in places that you cannot because your face would be known to all and sundry.”
“’Tis not safe—”
“It is not more unsafe for me than it is for you. Perhaps less so—if Davis hears that you have come to Haddon Grange in search of him, he will either flee or fight. But he will not learn of my arrival except onmyterms.”
“I can help as well,” put in Georgiana at her side. “I can speak to the villagers. I can gain their confidence and find out what they know or remember about Davis.”
“She’s very good,” Lydia said. “You will want her along.”
“’Tis not about wanting or no!” Arthur’s voice was rough with frustration.
“You’re right. It is not about what you want or what I want. It’s about what is the most expedient—and right now, that is for all of us to travel together to Haddon Grange and locate Davis as quickly as possible.”
“I can go with you,” Huw said.
Lydia’s gaze darted to the Welshman, whose normally booming voice was almost soft.
“If it eases your mind about the ladies’ safety, lad, I’ll go with you. Willie can mind the stables for a day or two without me to clout him regularly. It’ll be good for him.”
“And I will take charge of Sir Francis Bacon,” said Bertie mildly, “whilst you are gone.”
Arthur seemed to be gritting his teeth. “I don’t need all of you to come to my aid. This is my brother—my damned responsibility. I’ve asked enough of Miss Hope-Wallace as it is.”
Huw’s mouth was quirked at one corner beneath his beard. “There is no particular honor in going it alone, lad. If Miss Hope-Wallace and Lady Georgiana want to help, then you are best served by letting them.”
“And,” Bertie put in, “there is no little urgency to the project of finding your brother.”
Arthur rubbed one large hand across the back of his neck. His blue-green-gold eyes flickered to Lydia’s for one brief moment and then away.
“All right,” he said. “Fine. Let’s go then, we four, to Haddon Grange.”
Satisfaction flared in Lydia, bright and fervent, and alongside it—
Alongside it, a sudden horrible realization.
She had just committed herself to entering a town of strangers andtalkingto them. With no prior introduction or invitation—no, she would simply march up to a whole village’s worth of people she had never met and demand to know the whereabouts of one Davis Baird.
She could picture herself, with a kind of hallucinatory clarity, fainting at their feet. Her mind offered up a banquet of horrifying possibilities. She would cry. She would speak out of turn and be pilloried. Somehow her identity as H would become known and she would accidentally kindle a resurgence of Jacobitism.
