“Like our father.” Like with her father, the lure of the bottle had proven too much for Wyn. Because of her? Because she had driven him to it by touching him in the garden, like that night at the inn, begging him for touches when he was trying to be a gentleman?
No. It couldn’t be. He had left behind the bottle in Knighton because of her. For her. He had given it up to ensure her safety. Her father had been a loving man but weak, dispirited by his wife’s criticism and disapproval. But Wyn was strong.
Why had he done this?
Perhaps . . . because she was unworthy?
But that was not true. Her mother’s voice no longer rang in her head, reminding her of her deficiencies. And for pity’s sake, why had she wished to hear that voice again? Had she imagined speaking to her mother would change anything? But she had changed. She was no longer that girl from four years ago.
“Di?” Tracy pressed the tea forward again.
She sprang up and hurried to the window. In front of the house a stable boy held Galahad’s reins. The big horse’s attention was turned toward his master standing several paces away beside a closed carriage pulled by four magnificent grays. Marked with a crest, the carriage door was open, revealing only shadows within.
“Diantha.” Tracy’s footsteps came behind her. “If you’re thinking Yale’s like our father, then you’re thinking wrongly. Our father did his best for all of us before the end.”
Sir Reginald Lucas had been a quiet inebriate, not howling and debauched but exhausted and sad. Wyn had been, rather, contained. Disciplined. On the road he’d never shouted or railed, and he had not handed her cruelties. Only that night at the inn the darkness in his eyes and the desperation of his touch had frightened her. But he’d told her afterward that he hadn’t been trying to frighten her. He had only wanted her.
An arm extended from the carriage and a heavy hand grasped Wyn’s shoulder. He dislodged it then climbed into the vehicle, and the carriage started away. Diantha’s gaze followed it around the corner.
“Don’t tell me you’re hoping he’ll return,” Tracy said behind her. “Because even if he does I won’t allow it.”
Out on the street, the boy reached up to stroke Galahad’s ebony neck and the thoroughbred dipped his head for the caress.
“Sis, I’ve news that will take your mind off that bounder.” Tracy shifted from one foot to another and shot a glance toward the window. “It’s about our mother. You see, she’s here in London.”
During the moment then in which she could not quite draw breath, Diantha considered the vicious irony of discovering she loved a man and then losing him within minutes of rediscovering the mother who had never loved her. It was, frankly, nearly too much to bear.
“London?” she said weakly. “But I thought her in France. That is to say, Papa said something to that effect.”
“Well, there’s the thing. I don’t know that our stepfather knows she’s here.” Tracy scrubbed a palm across his jaw. “If she’d told him, he might have alerted the authorities.”
“Authorities? What do you mean? Is she not supposed to be in England?”
Tracy’s eyes widened. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“About that trouble with the law four years back.”
“The law?” She gaped. “Tracy, is Mama in exile? Is that why she left?”
“That, and Carlyle wouldn’t keep her any longer,” he said tightly. “Not after the smuggling.”
“Smuggling? Mama? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
He shook his head. “Everybody knows it.”
“Only I didn’t because you never told me!”
“I supposed Serena did, or that you’d read it in the paper, and you didn’t wish to speak of it.”
Diantha sank into the chair Wyn had vacated minutes earlier. “I didn’t,” she whispered. “I did not wish to know.” It was, it seemed, a day for painful understandings.
The baroness had often said Diantha was not biddable enough, not demure enough, not beautiful enough. But the greatest cruelty her mother had perpetrated on her—the cruelty that only the housekeeper Bess and Teresa knew about—that she had not been brave enough to tell Wyn about even after all he had shown her of himself—that cruelty she had only learned of two years ago. In seeking out her mother in Calais, she had wanted to confront her with it, to tell her that she knew about the lie and that she had overcome it. But she could not have pursued that interview if she’d known her family might be hurt by renewing the connection with her mother. So she had never asked them why the baroness left. Not once.
Wyn was not the only one who had told untruths. She had lied to herself. Over and over again.
“Oh, Tracy.” She covered her face with her hands. “None of this has gone the way I planned.”
“Well, that ain’t here nor there. But she’s leaving for France again tonight and I don’t think she’ll be back. So do you wish to see her or not?”
Mouth dry, Diantha nodded.
“All right then,” he said stiffly. “I’d better go arrange that. I’ll be back for you before dinner. But listen, don’t tell Serena. This will be between the two of us, all right?”
Diantha looked into her brother’s face and saw uncertainty and weakness. He was Sir Reginald’s son, after all. Nothing like Wyn, no matter how she tried to understand it.
“I won’t tell her.”
Wyn would never know that she’d found her mother either. He hadn’t wanted her to go to Calais; perhaps he had known about her mother’s exile, as everyone else seemed to. So this was for the best. That he knew nothing further of her at all was for the best, and that she knew nothing more of him.
But not one iota of her aching heart believed that.
Chapter 28
The carriage with the noble crest on the door preyed upon Diantha for the remainder of the day. In the parlor after a walk in the park with the children, Diantha wandered, pretending to herself that she did not intend to go toward the window, then when she went there pressing her nose against the glass and peering down the street. The stable boy sat on a stoop two houses down.
“Serena, I think I left my gloves in the carriage just now.”
Serena’s head was bent to letter writing. “Ask John to fetch them for you.”
“Oh, he’s probably busy polishing the silver or some such thing.” She hurried to the door. “I’ll go myself.” She sprinted across the hall. The footman stood in the foyer. She gave him a bright smile then put a silencing finger to her lips. “I won’t go far, John,” she whispered and slipped out the door. He stood on the stoop and watched after her as she ran along the sidewalk.
The boy looked up, a shiny coin suspended between two fingers. He jumped to his feet and tugged his cap. “G’day, miss.” He wasn’t but eight or nine, trim and neat as all the servants in Serena’s household.
She smiled. “What are you playing there with your coin?”
His face twisted into an anxious grimace.
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t intend to take it from you. Only, I saw you playing and wondered what game it is. I am very fond of clever games.” And lies, like the lie she’d told Serena about going to Lady Emily’s this evening so that she could instead pay a secret call on her wicked mother.
His shoulders relaxed and he flipped the coin between his fingers again. “You see, miss, this here game is good for what you call ‘agilities.’ ” He nodded knowingly.
She drew up her skirts and settled on the stoop. “Will you show me?”
He extended his hand and the coin jumped back and forth between his fingers like a living creature, passing across his knuckles thrice before it fell with a clink to the step. The boy frowned. “Hain’t yet got the whole hang of it.”
“I am certain you will soon. Have you just learned it?”
“The gentleman what came calling at milord’s house this morning taught it me ’fore I held his horse.” He peered at the coin with unrest again.
<
br /> “You don’t seem happy with it. Isn’t it enough for holding a horse?”
His brows made two upside down U’s. “Oh, no, miss, it’s plenty. It’s just that when the gentleman went, he left his horse behind. It’s a fine horse, miss, or I wouldn’t a wondered at it.”
“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.
/> “Tell me where the duke has taken him! I beg of you.”
For a moment he said nothing, the raucous sounds of the street all about them in the torch-lit dark. Finally, he nodded. “A’ll go and see what can be done, then send ye word.”
“No.” She gripped his arm. “You must take me.”
“No, lass.”
“There’s no ‘no’ about it. I will not leave your side.”
He looked about the street. “What’re ye doing here all alone?”
“Seeking the truth. Again. Now, you must take me to him. I want to help him. I need to help him. If I were one of your sisters, you would understand, wouldn’t you?”
The Highlander stared down at her from his vast height. For the second time in years, Diantha prayed.
Despite his long work for the government, and briefly for the underlord Myles, Wyn found himself surprised to discover that a great lord possessed a dungeon—in town—a dark basement of some medieval house in which he was now bound to a wall with shackles about his wrists. Given his present state, it was also somewhat difficult to convince himself that he had made the right decision to mount the duke’s carriage voluntarily. They had taken his knife. Indeed, he had surrendered it without fuss; mind numbed and heart thrashed from that little charade with Diantha, he hadn’t been thinking entirely straight when the carriage door opened and the duke’s minion uttered, “Get in or I’ll shoot you in the heart.” Since he hadn’t wished to die in a bloody mess on the sidewalk before her house, he had acquiesced. A man must have some pride, after all, and the tenderhearted minx deserved better.
A guard dozed in the corner, his lips jiggling with snores, keys to the irons dangling from his belt. Wyn had tried cajoling, even bribery, to win those keys, including an abrupt contortion of his arms when the big fellow came close that had gained him bruises on his wrists and a gash the length of Piccadilly along the side of his face. Perhaps not quite such a long gash, but it bled heartily enough. He felt a bit dizzy and his mouth was a desert. But it seemed clear now that if he’d gone to Yarmouth he would be likewise chained up. At least he’d spared Galahad the journey.
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