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He took advantage of the pause to check on Fenwick. The boy sat in the rear seat, arms folded in the approved posture for tigers, looking up at the rapidly darkening sky.
Longmore looked up, too. Thick clouds swarmed overhead. He wasn’t concerned. The hood was up, and if they faced a heavy rain, he could put up the apron. The back seat hadn’t a hood, but Fenwick would be all right. Olney had packed an umbrella, and Reade—deeply unhappy about being left behind—had been made to donate one of his older cloaks.
Longmore drove on, through the turnpike. They passed the White Horse Inn and the Foot Barracks.
“I don’t understand what’s got into my sister,” he said. “She always used to be so sensible.”
“Sensible but ignorant,” Sophy said.
He heard a wobble in her voice. It was very slight, but he was acutely attuned to her voice, in all its changes. Sometimes, in a crowd, he knew her by her voice alone, even when she adopted one of her provincial accents.
He looked at her. She had her hand to her forehead. The veil was in place, making it impossible to read her expression, yet even he could tell she was upset.
“Now what?” he said sharply.
“She doesn’t know anything,” she said. “Even for a girl of one and twenty, she’s lamentably naïve.” She took in a deep breath and let it out.
He watched the rise and fall of her bosom. It was crass in the circumstances, he supposed, but he was a man, and it was nighttime and she was dressed like a fashionable impure.
They passed the Westbourne conduit and approached the Rural Castle Inn. The mail coaches’ horns sounded. They were sending the Portsmouth coach on its separate way, down the Brompton Road. Where he’d soon follow.
“She has three brothers,” he said. “She’s not that innocent. She knows what men are like. She should have known better than to encourage any of that lot of loose screws.”
“A woman might think she knows about men, but until it happens—until a man touches her, she doesn’t know.”
He remembered this woman’s reaction when he’d breathed down her neck.
Was it possible she didn’t know what he’d assumed she knew?
But that was ridiculous. She was no schoolroom miss. She’d grown up in Paris. She was a milliner. And she walked the way she walked.
He passed Sloane Street and turned into Brompton Road. No parade of mail coaches now. Only the lone one, not very far ahead.
“Maybe that’s it,” she said.
“What is?”
“Maybe she’s had even less experience than other girls her age. It’s—what?” She counted on her gloved fingers. “A month since she told my brother-in-law to go to the devil. Only think what it’s been like for her. Imagine spending most of your life assuming you’ll marry one person, and then realizing he or she isn’t what you want. I’m sure she felt liberated and exhilarated after rejecting the Duke of Clevedon—but afterward … She had to find herself. She had to do what other girls do at seventeen or eighteen, in their first Seasons.”
“Yer worship!” Fenwick’s high-pitched voice broke into a very difficult piece of cogitation. “I say, your highness!”
“Your lordship,” Sophy corrected. “I explained that to you. How hard is it to remember?”
“Yer lordship!” Fenwick said more forcefully.
“You better close up the front the best you can. East wind coming about.”
“What is he, a weathercock?” Longmore said.
That was when the rain started pelting down.
“Better hurry, yer majesty,” the boy said. “Weather’s going to turn ugly in a minute.”
Chapter Seven
On Putney heath, to the south of the village, is an obelisk, erected by the corporation of London, with an inscription commemorating an experiment made, in 1776, by David Hartley, Esq., to prove the efficacy of a method of building houses fire-proof, which he had invented, and for which he obtained a grant from parliament of £2500.
—Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England, 1831
The weather did turn extremely ugly, very quickly. The wind picked up speed, driving the rain sideways at times, so that even the apron couldn’t fully shield them.
Still, any driver could manage a team in rain. This weather wouldn’t slow the Royal Mail, let alone stop it. Mail coach drivers continued through thunderstorms, floods, hailstorms, sleet, and blizzards. At present Longmore had only a bad rainstorm to contend with. No thunder and lightning to agitate the horses.
He drove on.
The storm drove on, too, with increasing intensity, the rain pouring straight down sometimes and at other times pelting sideways at them, depending on the gusting wind.
Though the waxing moon wouldn’t set until the small hours of morning, the storm swallowed its light. Rain poured off the hood, obscuring Longmore’s view of the horses as well as the road ahead. It dimmed what little light the carriage lamps threw on the road. The farther he drove, the darker grew the way ahead. He slowed and slowed again, and finally settled to a walk.
By the time they passed Queen’s Elm he was driving half blind and trusting mainly to the horses to keep to the road. Luckily this was a major coaching route, wide and smooth, which lowered the odds of his driving into a ditch.
Still, he needed to keep his mind on driving. Talking was out of the question. In any case, with the rain thumping on the roof and the wind whistling about their ears, they’d have to shout to make themselves heard.
They drove on through villages distinguishable mainly thanks to the lights in a few windows. Not many lights. It was bedtime in the countryside. The inns and taverns were awake, but not much else.
He glanced to his left. Only Sophy’s gloved hand, clenched on the curved arm of her seat, hinted at fear.
Though he quickly brought his gaze back to the road ahead, a part of his mind marveled at her. He couldn’t think of another woman who wouldn’t be shrieking or weeping right now, and begging him to stop.
He was starting to argue with himself about whether he ought to stop.
Though their creeping pace made it seem they’d been on the road for hours, he knew they hadn’t gone far. They hadn’t yet crossed the Putney Bridge, and that was only four miles from Hyde Park Corner.
Through the lashing rain he made out flickering lights ahead. Gradually, he began to discern the rough outlines of houses—or what seemed to be houses. Finally they reached the quaint old double tollhouse, with its roof spanning the road. The roof diverted some of the downpour while they waited for the gatekeeper to collect his eighteen pence and open the gate. Though he wasn’t inclined to prolong the encounter, he did answer Longmore’s question.
Yes, he remembered the cabriolet. An exceptionally fine vehicle and a prodigy of a horse. Two women tucked under the hood. Couldn’t properly make out their faces. One had asked for directions to Richmond Park.
When pressed for more detail, the gatekeeper said, “I told them to keep on this road up to the crossroads, then watch for the obelisk at the corner of Putney Heath, and go that way, rightish. I told them what to look for. It’s not hard to keep to the main road, but for some reason, there’s them that go astray there, and end up in Wimbledon.” He hurried back into the shelter of his tollhouse.
“Richmond Park,” Longmore said. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the wind and drumming rain. “What the devil’s there?”
“I read that Richmond Park was beautiful,” Sophy said.
“You think she’s gone sightseeing?”
“I hope so. It might calm her.”
He had to stop talking to negotiate the bridge. An old, narrow, uneven structure, it bulged up unexpectedly here and there. At this time of night, in this weather, the only way to proceed was cautiously.
Caution wasn’t Longmore’s favorite style.
He was grinding his teeth by the time he got them safely to the other side of the Thames. Thence it was uphill to Putney Heath and the obelisk, about two miles away.
The horses trudged up the road while the rain went on thrashing them, torrents cascading from the hood’s rim. The wind, howling occasionally to add atmosphere to the experience, blew the wet under the hood. It dripped down Longmore’s face and into his neckcloth.
Though he knew her glorious monstrosity of a traveling costume involved layers and layers, the wet would eventually penetrate to skin, if it hadn’t already.
He threw her a quick glance. She’d turned her head aside so that the back of her hat took the brunt of the wind-driven rain. That was the only sign of discomfort. Not a word of complaint.
He went on wondering at it, even while he watched the road and argued with himself what to do.
When at last they reached Putney Heath, the wind abruptly died down. In the distance a bell tolled. An ominous rumbling followed. He turned his head that way in time to see the crack of lightning.
The wind picked up again, coming from the same direction.
It was driving the thunderstorm straight at them.
* * *
Sophy was petrified.
Her heart had been pounding for so long that she was dizzy. She was terrified she’d faint and fall out of the carriage and under a wheel. If she fell, Longmore might not even notice at first, between the darkness and the rain’s incessant hammering.
Safe at home, the sound of rain drumming on a roof, even as fiercely as this, could be soothing.
This was not soothing.
She was city bred. If she’d ever spent time in the country, it must have been in her early childhood. She vaguely recalled traveling across the French countryside when she and her sisters had fled cholera-ravaged Paris three years ago. But they’d traveled in a closed vehicle, and not at night in such hellish weather.
Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t in any great danger. While a famously reckless man, Longmore was a highly regarded whip, too. In a carriage, one couldn’t be in safer hands. He drove with the magnificent calm the English deemed de rigueur in whipsters. The horses seemed tranquil and absolutely under his control. Traveling on the king’s highway, she knew, one could count on smooth, well-maintained roads. Hostelries lined them at short intervals. Help was rarely far away.
All the same, she didn’t feel very brave.
She’d started out concerned mainly about Lady Clara. The difficulties of travel, even at night, hadn’t crossed Sophy’s mind. For one thing, at this time of year, a sort of twilight prevailed rather than full darkness. For another, this evening had promised to be a pleasant one: When she set out from home for the Gloucester Coffee House, she’d assumed the moon would brighten their journey.
Instead, within minutes they were pitched into a streaming Stygian darkness, which feeble lights here and there only seemed to emphasize. The world about her felt too empty.
Breaking in on an unexpected silence, the crack of thunder, distant as it was, made her jump. Longmore’s head turned sharply that way, and in the faint glow of the carriage lights, she saw his jaw muscles tighten.
He turned to her. “Are you all right?” he said.
“Yes,” she lied.
“The horses won’t be, in a thunderstorm,” he said. “I’ve decided not to chance it. With a broken neck you won’t be much help to my sister. We’ll have to stop.”
She was only half relieved. As alarming as she found it to travel at present, she was impatient at delay. Back in London, after Fenwick had reported what his friends had told him about the cabriolet, she’d looked up Richmond Park in a road guide. It wasn’t very far from London. Still, near as it was, if even Longmore didn’t want to risk traveling on, no sane person would try it.
Though they seemed to be crossing an endless uninhabited wilderness, it wasn’t long before he turned into the yard of an inn. White flashes lit the sky, and the thunder rumbled oftener and more loudly, nearer at hand.
While the ostlers rushed out to take charge of the horses, Longmore practically dragged her from her seat and swept her along under his arm to the entrance, calling over his shoulder, “Look after the boy. If he isn’t drowned, dry him off and see that he’s fed.”
A short time later, she was shaking off the wet from her carriage dress, and Longmore was treating the landlord with the same imperious impatience he’d shown Dowdy and her accomplice: “Yes, two rooms. My aunt requires her own. And you’d better send a maid to her.”
“Your aunt?” Sophy said after the landlord had hurried away to see about rooms.
Amusement lit Longmore’s dark eyes and a tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I always travel with my aunt, don’t you know? Such a dutiful nephew. Luckily, I’ve scads of them.”
That was all it took: one rakish glint in his dark eyes and a ghost of a smile. Her heart gave a skip and pumped heat upward and outward and especially downward. She had to fight with herself not to rush to the nearest window and pull it open, storm or no storm. She needed a sharp dose of cold water.
She told herself to settle down. He’d used that look on hundreds of women, probably, with the same effect. And she was a Noirot. She was the one who was supposed to slay men with a glance.
In any event, she supposed she ought to be glad he owned at least a modicum of discretion.
As fille de joie euphemisms went, “aunt” was probably more useful than “wife.” Half the world would probably recognize him, and that half would know he wasn’t wed or likely to be anytime soon, if ever.
He took out his pocket watch. “This is ridiculous. We haven’t covered eight miles and it’s nearly half past ten o’clock.”
“She wouldn’t travel in this weather, surely?” Sophy said in a low voice, though they were alone in the small office. “If she did visit the park, wouldn’t she stop at an inn nearby when it grew dark?”
“I hope so,” he said. “But who knows what’s in her mind?”
“She has Davis,” Sophy said. “She wouldn’t let her mistress endanger herself.”
“Clara can be obstinate,” he said. “My hope is the horse. Wherever she tries to go, she’ll have the devil of a time changing horses. The cabriolet only wants one, but it needs a powerful one. Inns reserve those for the mail and stage coaches. She’ll probably find it easier to keep the one she set out with. Which means she’ll need to stop at intervals—and stay for a good while—to give the creature food and drink and rest.”
Sophy knew little about the care of horses. She and her sisters had had enough to do in learning not only their trade but a lady of leisure’s accomplishments as well. This was no small feat for girls who had precious little leisure. But it was unthinkable merely to learn a trade. While the DeLuceys and Noirots might all be greater or lesser rogues and criminals, they never forgot they were blue bloods. Too, they knew that refined accents and manners vastly improved the odds of luring unsuspecting ladies and gentlemen into their nets.
Learning dressmaking and learning to be a lady—not to mention acquiring other less virtuous Noirot and DeLucey skills—left no time for the finer points of horsemanship. Sophy could distinguish general types of vehicle, and she could appreciate a handsome horse, but for the rest she had to trust Longmore’s judgment.
“I think I’ll send Fenwick to insinuate himself among the stablemen,” he said with a glance at the door through which their host had departed. “They’ll have noticed the cabriolet if it passed, or they’ll have heard about it from post boys. We’ll get more detailed gossip from them than from any tollgate keepers.”
The innkeeper reappeared then, a plump maidservant following. While she led Sophy up to her room, Longmore stayed behind, talking to the landlord.
Meanwhile, less than ten miles away, in Esher’s Bear Inn, Lady Clara sat by the fire, studying her copy of Paterson’s Roads.
“Portsmouth,” she told Davis. “We’re already on the road, and it’s only a day’s journey.” She calculated. “Not sixty miles.”
“It’s not twenty miles back to London, my lady,” Davis said.
“I’m not going back,” Clara said. “I won’t go back to him.”
“My lady, this isn’t wise.”
“I’m not wise!” Clara jumped up from her chair, the guidebook clattering to the floor. “I declined a duke because he didn’t love me enough. Poor Clevedon! He at least liked me.”
“My lady, everybody who knows you loves you.”
“Not Adderley,” Clara said bitterly. “How could I be so blind? But I was. I believed all those romantic words he’d taken out of books.”
“Some gentlemen can’t express themselves,” Davis said.
“I’d almost got myself to believe that,” Clara said. “But that wasn’t the point, was it? That wasn’t the real problem. How humiliating that I needed Lady Bartham to point out the simple fact: If he’d truly loved and respected me, he would never have done what he did.”
Her ladyship hadn’t said it quite so baldly as that. But Lady Bartham never insulted or hurt anybody plainly and honestly. She’d slither about the subject like a snake, and every so often, when you weren’t expecting it, she’d dart at you, tiny fangs sinking in, so tiny you barely felt them … until a moment later, when the poison seeped in.
There was a moment’s silence, then, “Portsmouth is a naval town, my lady. Very rough. Sailors and brothels and—”
“It’s near,” Clara said. “It’s a port. I can get on a ship and sail far away. It can’t be so very dangerous. People go there to tour and sightsee. I’m ruined. Why shouldn’t I see the world? I haven’t even seen England! Where do I ever go? To our place in Lancashire and back to London and back to Lancashire. Since Grandmamma Warford died, I don’t go anywhere. She used to take me away, and we had such fun.” She swallowed. She still missed her grandmother. No one could take her place. Clara had never felt more in need of her counsel than now.
“She used to drive her own carriage, you know,” she went on, though Davis knew perfectly well. But Clara needed to talk, and her maid wouldn’t shriek at her, as Mama did. “She was an excellent whip. We’d drive out to Richmond Park and visit her friends there.” They would go out to Richmond Park and Hampton Court for a day’s outing.
Clara had driven to the park today, hoping somehow her grandmother’s spirit would find her, and tell her what to do. She’d left the park no wiser, and gone on to Hampton Court. None of Grandmamma’s wisdom came to her there, either, and even a living person, Grandmamma’s great friend, Lady Durwich, had no advice but for her to turn back and stop being such a ninny.
Clara wasn’t sure where she was going. To Portsmouth, to start with. After that … somewhere, anywhere. But not back to London. Not back to him.
Sophy’s room was small but clean, and the maidservant was as eager to please as Sophy expected her to be. People of every social degree judged by externals. While an upper-class accent and fine clothes were sure to win attentive service, generous tips and bribes could raise the quality of service to unadulterated obsequiousness.
Not only was Sophy expensively dressed but she had ready money. Marcelline had made Leonie provide funds for tips and bribes, and Sophy wasn’t stingy with her coin. She wanted supper and a fire and a bath and she was happy to pay for them.
She got all three quickly, without fuss, despite the hour and the sudden influx of storm refugees.
As it turned out, she was in too much turmoil, about Lady Clara and about the shop, to do more than pick at supper. Since she was, at the best of times, a light sleeper, she knew she was in no state to attempt sleeping until after she’d had a bath. That would quiet her. Certainly she’d feel better once she washed the ghastly egg mixture out of her hair. She’d brought her favorite soap, scented with lavender and rosemary.
Though the inn servants had brought a very small tub, she’d bathed under more primitive conditions. And no, it wasn’t the easiest thing to wash her hair without help, but she managed it.
And so, in time, thanks to the hair washing and the bathing and the soothing scent of her soap—and a glass of wine—the turmoil began to abate.
She donned her nightgown, wrapped herself in her dressing gown, poured another glass of wine, and settled into a chair near the fire to dry her hair.
The old inn’s walls were thick. She heard little of what passed outside her own room. The thunder grew more distant as the storm traveled on. The rain continued, beating against the window, but now that she was safe and dry indoors, the sound soothed her. She’d always liked the sound of rain.
She remembered rainy days in Paris, and the misty rain last week, when she’d strolled up St. James’s Street to lure Lord Longmore from his lair. While pretending to be gazing elsewhere, she’d watched him saunter across the street to her … such long legs in his beautifully tailored trousers … the finely cut coat, sculpted to his upper body, emphasizing his broad shoulders and lean torso … the snowy white neckcloth tied with elegant simplicity under his strong chin … he moved with the easy grace of a man completely at home in his body and completely sure of himself … such an odd combination he was … part dandy, part ruffian … so tall and athletic … she’d like to be his tailor … oh, she’d like to fit him in something snug … no harm in dreaming …
… What was burning?
Longmore tried not to think about his sister, out in the storm.
She wouldn’t be out in the storm, he told himself. She wasn’t that stupid. Even if she was, Davis wouldn’t stand for it.
But wherever Clara was, he wasn’t likely to catch up anytime soon. And wherever she was, he couldn’t protect her.
While his mind painted ugly scenes featuring his sister in the clutches of villains, he wasn’t altogether unaware of what passed in the next room. He’d caught the muffled sound of voices when Sophy talked to the maid, and the tramp of feet in the room and a thump of something heavy being set down and then the splashing.
She was taking a bath.
That was a much more agreeable image than the ones of his sister in peril.
He told himself that worrying about Clara wasn’t going to help her, and it would only wear on his nerves, already frayed after the slog through the storm.
He had another bottle of wine sent up and he gave his coat to the inn servant for drying and brushing.
Since his trousers were still damp, he drew a chair up before the fire. There he sat, drinking.
By degrees, he grew calmer. Clara might be out of her head, but she wouldn’t endanger her horse, he reminded himself. She’d have taken shelter. She’d go to a respectable inn because Davis wouldn’t let her go into one that wasn’t—and respectable inns lined the Portsmouth Road.
The wine and more optimistic thoughts calmed him enough to make him grow drowsy. He was putting his booted feet up onto the fender when Sophy screamed.
He sprang from the chair to the door between their rooms. He yanked the handle. It wouldn’t open. He stepped back a pace and kicked.
The door flew open, crashing against the wall.
She was making little sounds of distress and dancing about and trying to pull off her dressing gown. Smoke rose from the hem. He saw a tiny flame lick upward.
In two quick strides he reached her, ripped the ties she’d been struggling with, pulled the dressing gown off her, and threw it into the bathtub.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh!”
“Are you all right?” he said. Without waiting for an answer, he turned her around, his heart racing while he looked for signs of incipient fire. He spied some brown spots and holes at the bottom of the garment, but no signs of active burning.
“What the devil were you doing?” He turned her around again. Though festooned with frills—at the neck and wrists and down the front opening—her nightdress was a flimsy nothing. Tissue-thin muslin … through which one could easily make out the outlines of her … naked … body.