“Did he ever return to retrieve it?” Despite herself, her fingers twisted in her lap.
“No, miss. I took it to the stable and let old Pomley have it. Too good an animal for me to keep that long waiting, ’specially when the gentleman said it’d only be a quarter hour.”
A quarter hour. Enough time to make her an offer she refused before he got into a crested carriage and drove away. Without his horse.
Panic twined in her belly. “You know, I had a glimpse of the horse earlier. It is beautiful.”
“Strong too. A racer by blood, though he don’t have the temperament for the track, the gentleman says.” The boy shook his head regretfully.
“Will you show him to me?”
He leaped up. Diantha followed through the carriage passage to the mews, her nerves too high to bother to step gingerly around puddles to the stall in which the head groom had stabled Galahad. Munching on a bucket of oats, the animal turned its head to glance at her.
A wash of helplessness rushed through her. Wyn would never usually leave Galahad behind like this. But perhaps he’d been too drunk to care. Or perhaps the men in that carriage had been friends and they’d taken him off somewhere to drink even more, or to another “French convent” to enjoy themselves.
She pressed her hands to the sides of her face. No. Even then, this negligence simply was not him. She could not believe it. But she must. She’d no reason not to, except the naïve hope she had harbored in her heart since the moment she saw him on that Mail Coach. She was a perfect fool.
Wyn would eventually be sober again, he would retrieve Galahad, and she would have to resign herself to encountering him in society upon occasion. But after tonight’s interview with her mother, the future needn’t hold any more reckless plans. That part of her life must end. A new woman must arise from it, sadder but wiser for what she had learned of herself and a man.
By the time Tracy came for her at half past seven Diantha was stretched with nerves. They drove in silence through the lamp-lit streets cluttered with vehicles. Finally he let down the steps onto a narrow byway. Not a hundred yards distant the mast tips of ships rose in a cluster, and heavily laden carts were all about, all swirling with the mists rising as the night cooled.
“The docks,” he explained. “Our mother’s ship sets sail in an hour from just over there.”
“It sails at night?”
He shrugged as though to deny that their mother was a criminal escaping under cover of dark. From doors along the street came the sounds of laughter and music. Men passed in and out, rough-looking people with weathered faces and worn clothing. Sailors, she supposed. One woman drew off the hood of her cloak as she entered a pub, her brassy hair and rouged cheeks garish in the torchlight. This was a different world by far than Devon or even the road through Shropshire and Wales. She hadn’t felt the prickly discomfort of walking into an alien world, a dangerous world, since the Mail Coach, before the moment she’d wished for a hero and a dark Welshman appeared.
Glancing left and right, Tracy drew her toward a door. It opened on a bald-pated man of middling years, his chest encompassed in a red waistcoat into which he hooked his thumbs.
“Well well,” he said with a grin. “Look who’s a pretty thing.”
“My sister ain’t any of your business, Baker,” Tracy said shortly. “Now if you’ll bring my mother out here, I’ll be much obliged not to inform Savege of her presence in town.”
Mr. Baker set a thoughtful hand on his chin. “Well now, sir, your mother might not be up to accepting callers at present.”
“She’d better be. I told her this afternoon that we’d come.”
Mr. Baker gestured to the stair. “Be my guest.” His gaze shifted to Diantha. “But I don’t know that this little lady will appreciate her mother’s delicate sensibilities.”
Tracy’s face reddened. He turned to her. “I’ll go up and tell her we’re here.” She nodded and he ascended.
Mr. Baker’s gaze slowly slid from Diantha’s crown to her hem. His grin widened. She tugged her cloak firmly about her and went to the narrow window beside the door. Out on the misty street a cart passed by, then an old hackney coach, a few riders, and other traffic, and her hands grew colder and damper. She closed her eyes and the image of a carriage with a crested door and a riderless black horse arose before her.
She popped her eyes open. She needed a plan, anything to distract her from constantly thinking of Wyn.
Her throat caught. Not twenty feet away a man passed through a circle of lamplight, a very large man wearing an overcoat and hat but whose long hair, square jaw, and sheer mass were unmistakable.
She grabbed the door handle.
“Now there, miss,” Mr. Baker said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“There’s no time.” Her heartbeats flew, her hands slippery on the knob.
“Your brother will come down in a minute with your mother.”
“Tell him—tell him I will return shortly.” She pulled the door open.
He grasped her arm. “Now, wait there, miss.”
Lord Eads disappeared behind a cluster of people up the street. She whirled around. “No. Tell my brother that I cannot see her. That I changed my mind. There is a hackney coach just letting off passengers there. I will hire it to drive to my friend’s house where I was intended tonight. I cannot see my mother now.” Her heart thudded.
“You’ll not have this opportunity again. Your mother and I sail on the hour.”
“I—I know. I know.” She yanked her arm free and swung open the door.
Dashing through traffic, she breathed in foul odors of fish and animal refuse, but she didn’t care; her senses were alive again after hours of numbness. Her skirts hampered her and the Highlander’s broad back moved quickly away.
A pair of men jeered at her from a doorway. “Here, pretty girl! Scamper our way. We’ll give you a fine romp.” One of them sprang up and grabbed her arm.
“No!” She struggled. “Release me!”
Lord Eads halted, turned about, and Diantha’s heart nearly exploded.
Momentarily he was upon them, shoving her accoster aside. “Didna yer mother teach ye how ta treat a leddy, ye ruffian?” He turned his glower upon her as the ruffian retreated. “And didna anybody teach ye no ta run about the streets alone a’nicht, lass?”
“No. I’ve been in the dark my entire life. But you must rectify that now.” Shaking fiercely, she grabbed his thick arm. “Where is he? Have you hurt him? You must tell me or I think I will die. Truly. I am not being dramatic. This feeling in my breast is beyond describable. It’s the worst thing I have ever felt. All day I have been trying to pretend I don’t feel it, but it’s of no use. Have you harmed him? And if not—oh, God, please not—where is he?”
His brow lowered. “A haena harmed him, lass. But A dinna ken where he be.”
“I need the truth,” she pleaded. “If you know that he is simply off somewhere with his friends debauching, then I will have to accept that. But this morning he departed strangely, in a carriage with a noble crest on the door pulled by the most spectacular foursome of gray horses, and he left his own horse behind. That isn’t like him, and I realize—”
“A team o’ fine grays, ye say?”
Diantha’s heart did two enormous turnabouts. “Do you know them?”
“Aye, lass.” His brow was dark.
“Are . . . ?” She couldn’t breathe. “The duke?”
He nodded.
Her fingers dug into his sleeve. “I pray you, tell me where to find him.”
“I canna.” He shook his head. “He’d cut ma throat.”
“The duke?”
He peered at her like she was daft.