“I can’t leave you behind!”
Lydia reached out and gripped Georgiana’s hand. “I need you to do this. Until the Thibodeaux are caught and the rifle scope destroyed, we will never be safe. We cannot let them go free if we have the chance to stop them. And I—I cannot let them go after Arthur, not if there’s something I can do to prevent it.”
“Curse you,” Georgiana said. But she moved to the door, her skirts in her hands and her face ferocious. “I’ll be back with thecavalry. Don’t forget about the bloody pistol—and don’t you dare let them shoot first, or I’ll come back and kill you myself.”
“I promise.” Her voice trembled, just a little, and she could not bring herself to mind.
Georgiana gave her one last blistering look, and then she ducked out the door, pulling it closed behind her without a word.
Lydia took a single shaky breath. Then she made herself walk briskly over to Selina’s desk and sit down behind it. The front of the enormous desk went all the way to the ground. They would not be able to see the lower half of her body—not unless they dragged her out of her chair.
She reached out and picked up the pearl-handled pistol from where Arthur had left it. It felt small and solid in her clammy palms. Her fingers slipped across the metal bore as she slid it into her lap and tucked it into the folds of her skirts.
She was still sitting there, her hands locked on the gun and the gun wrapped in her dress, when the door burst open.
The horse’s flanks bunched beneath Arthur’s thighs and he tried—it took powerful physical effort—not to push the beast into a gallop.
Jasper had commandeered the mounts of three uniformed men straight out of the parade with a low-voiced whisper and a few choice names. The young soldier on the bay had practically flung his reins at Jasper in a burst of fervent subordination.
Once they were mounted, Jasper had led them alongside the parade route, picking their way through the maze of pedestrians and bellowing orders when they seemed to be slowing. Arthur wanted to give his horse its head, but there was no use—they were going as fast as they could. It felt like a crawl.
Lydia. All he could think about was Lydia, and the fact that the Thibodeaux knew where she was.
“How do they know?” he asked Davis at his side. His voice was tight and rough, and his hands felt clumsy on the reins. “How do they know about your signal?”
Davis hesitated a moment before replying. His horse was a large bony chestnut, tall enough that Davis’s head was level with Arthur’s own. “’Twas in a letter that I passed along to the Thibodeaux from Hope-Wallace. I could tell they were growing suspicious—I had to prove my loyalty somehow. But I cleared it with Hope-Wallace before I gave it to them, damn it!”
“And none of you thought to inform the duchess?”
Davis swore blisteringly. “No one from the Home Office was meant to use the library for communication again. There’s no reason that book should have been in the window.”
“Well it was. And now Lydia is there, bloodydefenseless, because the pair of you had to keep your goddamned secrets!”
There was a long pause before Davis spoke again, and when he did, his voice was raw. “Was she well? The last time you saw her. Was she all right?”
Somehow Arthur felt he had not stopped seeing her. Her face was always before him—pale and tense as she told him to hurry, soft with sleep as she lay on the cot. Flushed and smiling at him in endless moments, the light playing in the curves and dips of her mouth, lingering on the shape of her happiness.
“Aye,” he said, “she was all right.”
“She knows, then? That—that I was the one who wrote the letters?”
“Aye.” The horse wanted to run; Arthur could feel it. He let up on the reins and squeezed his knees, just enough for his gray to push its nose ahead of Davis’s mount and press closer to Jasper’s.
They were over the bridge; the roads were clearing.
They could get to her in time. He would make it so.
“I’m sorry,” Davis said.
Arthur turned his head to look at his brother: dusty and familiar and somehow edged with despair, his body a line of tension atop the chestnut horse. Davis was not looking at him, only staring straight ahead.
“For what?”
“I’m sorry I stole the scope. I never meant for you to be involved. I never meant any of this.”
“I don’t care about the goddamned scope,” he said, and found to his surprise that he meant it. He understood why Davis had done it. He knew Davis’s intentions had been good. “But I don’t understand why you could not tell me the truth. If I’d known—”
“You would not have believed me.”
