That left them facing an undeniable conclusion.
Her tone suggesting that her disgust at the situation was vying with despondency, Adriana put the inescapable into words. “The wretched thief didn’t come to Lincoln after all.”
Shaking his head in a puzzled way, as if he still couldn’t quite believe it, Dickie said, “The blackguard must have gone to Sleaford, never mind that that makes no sense.”
Adriana glanced out of the window. “There’s still plenty of light. If we take the road to Sleaford—”
“No.” When the siblings and everyone else looked his way, Nicholas calmly stated, “Yes, we’ve clearly overshot, but we did that because we made assumptions. Ones that didn’t turn out to be correct. We’re now three days behind our thief. We can’t afford to make yet more assumptions that might lead us even farther astray.”
Everyone was watching him. Evenly, he continued, “We would do well to pause and think of our thief. He hasn’t got the horse’s papers. If he’d been acting as an agent, stealing the horse for some underhanded breeder, then he would have made some effort to get hold of those documents. Given he didn’t and hasn’t got them, the only thing he can do with The Barbarian is to sell him, not as a Thoroughbred stallion but as an ordinary riding horse. And we all know what trouble he’s going to have when he tries to ride him or allows someone else to try. I suspect that once we find the town to which the thief has gone, locating him isn’t going to be difficult. Someone will have heard of his problems. Consequently, I’m less concerned about our speed in catching up with him than that we do, in fact, track him down.”
By now, Nicholas had a firm grip on his role in their company. Specifically, he had to steer it without appearing to exercise control. Given the Sommervilles’ mercurial temperaments, he had to rein in their impulsiveness and moderate their enthusiasms, while at other times, he needed to counter their disappointment and dejection with subtle encouragement and by stoking hope.
“What we need to do,” he rolled on, “is to stop making assumptions and start plotting the thief’s course based on established fact. On sure and certain sightings.” He glanced around the company. “By my reckoning, the last such sighting we had of The Barbarian was on the road north of Grantham, before the road forked between Lincoln and Sleaford.”
“Exactly.” Addie sat straighter. “And as he didn’t come to Lincoln, he must have gone to Sleaford, and we should follow with all speed.”
Nicholas met and held her gaze. “But what if he didn’t?” He glanced at Dickie and the others. “What if he didn’t head to Sleaford at all but took the road toward Lincoln and turned off it at some point?”
The others all frowned, and Nicholas met her eyes again. “What if we rush down to Sleaford, then find no sign of him there? What then?”
She didn’t have an answer, and none of the others did, either. She sighed and fought not to slump in dejection. “So what should we do?” At least she managed not to wail.
Along with everyone else, she looked to Nicholas for an answer.
With a dip of his head, he obliged. “What I think we have to do is backtrack to our last certain sighting and come forward again, this time more carefully so that we pick up the true trail.” He paused, clearly considering, then suggested, “As we’ve come this far north, I suggest we ride directly back along the road we came in on as far as Leadenham. We were more careful after that. We asked many more people between Leadenham and Lincoln than we had on the earlier stretch, between Barkston and Leadenham.” He glanced at Addie and Dickie. “We can start questioning people south of Leadenham. If he did turn off the road somewhere along there, then we might pick up his trail again without having to go all the way back to Barkston.”
Addie recognized a sop to her pride when she was offered one and knew it behooved her to accept his suggestion with grace and some degree of humility. She remembered her nagging concern as they’d ridden into Lincoln that they had, in fact, lost the trail; it seemed she’d been right.
Slowly, she nodded. “That sounds the best—most sensible—plan.” She tried not to sound too glum. She looked at Dickie, and he nodded in agreement, rather more readily than she.
With that decided, they agreed to have an early dinner and leave at first light. Given it was high summer, first light was very early, but all were eager to get going again, to ride south and find the dastardly thief’s trail.
To varying degrees, each of them felt they’d been made a fool of—by the thief and, at least in Addie’s case, also by her own impetuousness. That rankled.
The grooms and stablemen went out to have their dinner in the taproom. Addie left her brother and Nicholas in the parlor and went upstairs to find Sally and tell the maid their news while changing out of her riding habit. By the time Addie came down again, the table was being laid and the serving girls were streaming in with steaming dishes to set before them.
The Turk’s Head was a renowned hostelry, and the food was excellent. The succulent meal went some way toward alleviating Addie’s mood.
But she was still rather glum when, as soon as evening closed in, they left the parlor and climbed the stairs to their rooms.
She and Nicholas parted from Dickie at his door, and they continued along the corridor, pacing side by side.
Nicholas couldn’t see Adriana’s expression as they ambled along; she kept her gaze firmly fixed on the worn red runner muffling their footsteps.
He sensed that she was not as cast down as she had been earlier, yet…
The compulsion to cheer her up was a living thing inside him.
He looked ahead—at the alcove that featured prominently in his memories.
Distinctly fond memories that pricked and prodded and nudged, insisting that he needed to follow up and explore further.
That he needed to confirm that the fireworks of the previous night hadn’t been just his imagination.
That his incendiary reaction to her kiss and her equally startling reaction to his would occur again.
If they kissed again.
