“There’s someone to ask.” Young Gillies pointed to a workman trudging home along the verge.
The company slowed, and Young Gillies leaned from his saddle to hail the man and ask if he’d seen a rider on a chestnut leading a huge bay horse.
The worker shook his head. “But I’ve been trenching over there.” He pointed to the west. “I only just got onto the road.”
They thanked him and continued on. Once they entered the outskirts of Grantham, the grooms and stablemen stopped and asked every person they saw, but no one had seen the mounted thief and horse.
Given it was just past midsummer, it was still light when they reached the town’s main square.
Rather grudgingly, Addie suggested, “We may as well stop at the Angel.”
She was speaking of the same coaching inn that Nicholas and Young Gillies had patronized the previous night.
Nicholas rode beside her into the inn’s cobbled yard. “We’d better see about getting rooms.”
She grimaced, but nodded. “Just as well it isn’t hunting season, or we’d have no hope. The Angel’s one of the most popular inns in the district.”
Their company drew up, and Young Gillies promptly hailed the ostlers in the manner of old friends. Still in her saddle, she listened as Young Gillies confirmed that the rider they were pursuing hadn’t taken refuge—indeed, hadn’t stopped even for just a bite—at the inn.
She sighed in disappointment and slid her boot free of the stirrup, then to her complete surprise, Nicholas, having already dismounted, appeared beside her, reached up, and lifted her down.
Her senses rioted, and she nearly swallowed her tongue.
For a finite second, she was weightless. She wouldn’t have said she was a lightweight, but he made lifting her down seem both effortless and graceful.
He set her on her feet and steadied her.
Just as well, because she would have staggered.
Dazed and distinctly giddy, she blinked. Her senses surged, skittering and leaping; she hauled in a breath and held it, hoping to calm them, but they remained a very long way from settled.
Luckily, in the shadows of the yard, no one else seemed to notice.
Remembering the moment under the porte-cochere, she shot a sharp glance at Nicholas, but on releasing her, he’d turned to check that Young Gillies and Rory had the horses in hand.
With that confirmed, Nicholas turned back to her. His expression unreadable, he waved toward the inn’s side door. “Shall we?”
She managed a nod—marshaling her tongue for coherent speech was still uncertain—and cast a last, lingering look around the yard. Disappointment pricked, and instead of making for the door, she baldly stated, “He’s not here.” She frowned. “I thought he would be. If he stopped in Grantham—”
“He might well have thought twice about putting up here.” Nicholas glanced around, taking in a party of three riders—all obviously gentlemen—who had followed them into the yard. “If our thief has any inkling of The Barbarian’s true worth, with him being such a noteworthy horse, it’s likely our blackguard will take pains to avoid places where gentry congregate. Those of our class are much more likely to notice and remember a horse of The Barbarian’s caliber.”
She wrinkled her nose. “True.”
“And that,” Nicholas continued, “suggests we ought to scout out the other places in town where our thief might have sought a bed.”
Addie brightened. Young Gillies, Rory, Jed, and Mike, having seen the horses stabled, chose that moment to join them, and she listened with approval as Nicholas instructed the four men to go around the town in pairs, checking all possible places at which the thief might have put up for the night.
“If by chance you find him, one of you stay and keep watch while the other returns to alert us.”
“Aye, sir,” the men chorused.
Nicholas nodded a dismissal, and the men left, eagerly vanishing into the encroaching darkness.
Grateful that, by then, her sense of balance had returned and her legs were once again steady, when Nicholas again gestured to the door, Addie walked beside him up the two steps to the inn’s side porch, where Sally was waiting with everyone’s bags piled at her feet.
Nicholas hefted his own bag and those of the two grooms. Addie claimed her traveling bag and Sally’s as well, while the maid took Jed’s and Mike’s. Nicholas juggled the bags he held, opened the door, and sent it swinging wide. Addie walked through into the inn’s side hall, and Sally and he followed.
By the time they fronted the reception counter, her head was once again clear, and she’d got a firm grip on her wayward wits.
