Some part of her felt cool relief at his words.
She could go back with Georgiana, back where it was safe. A small craven corner of her heart wanted desperately to retreat. Not because she was afraid—well, notonlythat—but because she did not know if she could manage whatever adventure was to come as they tracked the Thibodeaux.
Even to find a messenger and explain what she wanted seemed a near-insurmountable obstacle. She did not know precisely where she had left Georgiana, nor was she certain she could explain the turnings they’d taken to a stranger.
But—
Clever, she thought.And brave.
“This is important,” she said. “We can do this together. I know we can.”
His hand slipped into her hair. “You drive me out of my head,” he rasped.
He leaned down and kissed her then, swift and hard and unexpected. A heartbeat later he pulled away, then nudged her in the direction of the inn’s main building. “Send them a message and then make your way back here as quick as you can. I’ll look about while you’re gone and see what I can find.”
She started to go, then dashed back into the stall. She wrapped her fingers in his shirt and pulled him down for another kiss. Hismouth softened against hers. His lips parted as they fitted against her own, and his arms came around her—at once safe and stirring.
“I’ll be as swift as I can manage,” she murmured.
“I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She relinquished his shirt, kept to the shadows, and hastened back out to the courtyard. It was easy to find a porter, idling beside the inn’s front door, to carry a message to Georgiana. It was far harder to make him understand what she wanted, between her trembling voice and the anxious fog that seemed to suffuse her thoughts now that she was not in the middle of a crisis.
But through sheer force of will, she managed it. She scrawled a message upon a discarded bill of sale and pressed it into the porter’s palm along with a handful of coins. And then he was off, his hat tipped toward her as he went.
She took a shaking breath, and then a second, and then a third. And then—oh Lord, she was drunk on her own successes, perhaps—instead of returning to the mews, she slipped the veil back over her face and crept toward the front door of the inn.
There was a public dining room. If the Thibodeaux were inside, perhaps she could seat herself close enough to listen in on their conversation. She patted at the back of her head, trying to make sure that her hair was fully obscured. With her hair covered and the veil in place, she did not think they would know her.
But inside the dining room, she did not see them. A sylphlike barmaid with hair even redder than Lydia’s own sidled over to offer a table, but Lydia shook her head.
“I’m looking for my companions.” Oh hell. She’d attempted a mumbling Scottish accent to try to disguise her voice in case the Thibodeaux were somewhere within earshot, but she’d quite missed the mark. She sounded Russian.
“A man and woman.” Hang it, that wasn’t any better. Now she sounded Welsh, perhaps by way of Newcastle. “They just came inside. She was wearing a dark blue frock with gold piping.”
“Aye, I know the ones you mean,” the barmaid said. “They went out the back a few minutes ago. Took their pasties for the road.”
For the road.
The blood in Lydia’s veins went to ice.
Arthur. The coaches.
She threw herself back out the way she’d come, heedless of her flapping veil and the bemused glances of the public room’s patrons. She raced around the building and—barely sensible of what she was doing—ducked through the stable door and pressed herself to the wall.
Through the open shutters of the stable’s window, she could see the line of hacks for hire. She flung back her veil for a clearer view.
At the end of the line stood Didier Thibodeaux, arguing in thickly accented English with the final vehicle’s driver. Claudine had already mounted and sat on the high perch, her ankles crossed beneath her skirts and a paper-wrapped pasty in her hand.
At the coach’s window, plain as day to Lydia’s vantage, the leather curtain inside dropped suddenly, a quick unfurling that shielded the interior from view.
Lydia’s heart clenched in terror. Someone was inside the coach. Someone who did not want to be seen.
Didier appeared to win his argument with the driver. He swung himself up onto the bench, and the driver stepped reluctantly away, shaking his head and muttering something Lydia could not hear.
The coach rocked into motion. As she watched, the doorcracked open, and a hand emerged, loosing something pale that fluttered to the ground.
The hand was Arthur’s. She knew it even as he drew quickly back into the coach—she recognized the strong fingers, the freckled burns, the muscular turn of his forearm.
