Isabella pressed herself to an upstairs, rain-drizzled hall window. He must have forgone a hackney today—a poor choice, considering the sudden rain shower moments ago—for he walked the flagway in drenched clothes, brushing water from his sleeves and wiping a wet face.
When he approached the townhouse door, he disappeared from her line of vision.
But not from her line of thought. He was tangled there—annoyingly so—as he had been for the past week. Many men called upon her father. Many called upon her.
But it was the persistence, the look on his face, the way he strode to the townhouse door every other day with his shoulders braced and taut, as if prepared for … what?
Such mystery was unbearable. She must satisfy herself, else she’d go mad wondering. “Bridget?”
Her maid emerged from Isabella’s bedchamber, wet stains on her pinafore, hands pink from swishing warm water in the copper tub.
“I am desirous to take a walk. You must fetch our bonnets and umbrellas at once.”
“But your bath—”
“How much better to take it after our exertion? Besides, I shall look pale and drawn for the dinner party tonight if I do not take on some form of exercise, shan’t I?” Isabella turned back to the window, anticipation coursing through her. Below, the stranger was already departing with long strides. “Bridget, make haste!”
They were following him.
And trying very much to appear as if they weren’t.
William kept his pace even. Slow enough they might gain on him, yet fast enough they would think him unaware. How could he be anything but?
They had emerged from the townhouse not two minutes after his own departure, and though he’d glanced back only once, he’d found both sets of eyes pinned to him from the shadows of their umbrellas.
Umbrellas they would need, no doubt.
As he crossed Hinckley Court, the street leading from the illustrious Mulcaster Square, he glanced up at the pewter-colored sky. Heavy clouds billowed, made darker by the black smoke rising from townhouse chimneys. The air was moist, tropical, cool to his face.
Then a drop landed on his forehead. Another torrent unleashed.
He ducked to the left under a birch tree, which hovered its leafy branches over a dripping iron fence and bench. Cold seeped through his already-drenched clothes, spurring a shiver through his body.
He should have taken the hackney. He would have.
But something had seemed wrong.
The public room had been crowded this morning. Youths gambled in the corner of the room, hovering beneath a table as if they imagined its four wooden legs would keep them hidden. Innkeepers bustled about with aprons and steaming breakfast plates. Patrons conversed in various groups, the whiff of their unwashed bodies, black coffee, and mutton breakfasts mingling into an unpleasant stench.
Then the jarvey. The one who’d driven William to and from the Gresham townhouse this past week, with his long chin and thin whiskers and yellowed teeth. He’d been leaning against a beam toward the back end of the room, facing a stranger, nodding his head several times.
The stranger wore no continental hat.
But his eyes had found William.
And lingered.
Perhaps it was nothing. His imagination. The result of too little sleep and too much confusion—
“Excuse me.”
William turned.
Standing before him, with rain waterfalling over one green and one blue umbrella, were his two indiscreet followers.
Miss Gresham wore a slight flush of pleasure, a small smile, though she seemed less certain of herself than she had upon their last encounter.
The girl accompanying Miss Gresham looked pale and horrified.
