Elizabeth Thornton (9 page)

She was afraid to defy his instructions, but she was even more afraid of meeting up with him again. So she’d decided on a compromise. She’d put up at the Castle, but she’d find her own accommodations under an assumed name. It was the book he wanted, and as long as he thought she could get it for him, she was safe, up to a point. He wouldn’t kill her, but there were other ways of terrorizing a woman.

She let out a shivery sigh and turned her head to look at her young maid. Nan was sleeping, covered with blankets to keep her warm. The poor girl had embarked on this journey in good faith, but it turned out that she didn’t have the stomach for coach travel. The swaying of the chaise nauseated her. They couldn’t go on like this. When they reached Marlborough, she’d have to arrange for Nan to return to Bath in the morning, and if possible find someone to take Nan’s place.

Her thoughts drifted to the last time she had made this journey, just before Christmas, on the first leg of their jaunt to Paris. The roads had been in no better
shape then, but the atmosphere inside the coach had been far different. They’d been jubilant, irrepressible, she and George and Olivia, and they’d carried on like school children playing truant. The least little thing had set them off into gales of laughter.

George
. She couldn’t believe it had come to this. She half expected to waken and find that she was having a nightmare. But George wasn’t the sort of person who turned up in one’s nightmares. He was too easygoing, too much fun, too nice.

And these were the very qualities that worried her mother. In fact, her mother’s worst nightmares were about George. As the younger son, said Mama, he had to take up a profession. He couldn’t always rely on Daniel to give him an allowance. But the professions that Mama thought suitable—the church, the army, the law—bored George to tears. If he had to take up a profession to earn his bread, he said, he’d take up landscape gardening. That was the great love of his life.

There was no doubt about it, Mama had declared. George took after his father, and she trembled in her shoes to think what would become of him. This dire prediction had flowed over George as water over the proverbial duck’s back. He never argued. He wasn’t rebellious. He simply went his own charming way regardless of what others thought.

He had been the perfect companion to share her adventure in Paris. He wasn’t like other young men who were interested only in gaming, drinking, and wenching. He’d come to see the sights, the architecture, the museums, and the magnificent gardens. And when Hugh had arrived on the scene and introduced them to his friends at the embassy, George had enjoyed that too. Then he’d
met his own friends and gone off with them. He would write to her, he said. And she had laughed, knowing that George wasn’t much of a letter writer.

She covered her face with her hands. How had it come to this? Her brother’s life depended on her, and she was no heroine. She wondered if she’d done the right thing by not going to the authorities. Those family conferences that she’d always scorned would have been a great comfort to her now. But she’d set her course, and she would stick to it till together they decided what was best.

If only she had paid more attention to Mr. Horton—Morton—when she’d danced with him at the Assembly Rooms. George’s friends, he said, were becoming worried about him. No one knew where he was. She should have listened to him more carefully. She should have taken him seriously. She should have asked him questions about where and when he’d last seen George. Now, she didn’t know where Mr. Horton was or how she could find him.

She stayed as she was for several minutes. When Nan began to stir, she dropped her hands and looked out the window. There was nothing to be seen in the thickening dusk but the glisten of raindrops caught in the light of the box lamp.

Abbie was jerked from an uneasy sleep when the chaise came to a swaying, grinding halt. She heard coach doors slamming and men shouting. Horses were neighing and stamping their feet. Her maid moaned and blinked her eyes, but she did not waken.

Abbie let down the window and looked out just as one of her hired postboys came down from his perch.

“Looks like an accident, miss,” he said. “I’ll go take a look.”

She’d thought, hoped, when the coach halted, that they’d reached their destination, but evidently this wasn’t the case. Ahead of them, in the faint glow cast by the box lamps on each carriage, she could see a line of stationary vehicles stretching all the way to the bend in the road. There could be no doubt that some unfortunate carriage had come to grief.

When five minutes had passed and her postboy had not returned, she decided to investigate in person. She opened the door, let down the steps, and gingerly climbed down. Beneath her feet, the road was like sheet ice, and she steadied herself with one hand against the front wheel till she found her feet. As she passed her postilion, he half turned in the saddle to look at her.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Have you heard anything?”

“Mail coach,” he replied. “It must ’ave taken the bend too fast. They thinks they’s real whips, them mail coachmen. That’ll learn ’em.”

She had just come abreast of the next carriage, when the sudden blast of a tin horn up ahead, followed by the sound of men cheering, shattered the silence. Some minutes passed, then, “All clear!” shouted a coachman before climbing into his box, and the cry was taken up and carried down the line of waiting carriages.

Inch by slow inch, she began to retreat, but she stopped when someone called her name. The young man who came out of the shadows was wearing a many-caped driving coat with a double row of silver buttons down the front. This was the fashion that all young men who aspired to be dandies had taken up. Her brother George had a coat just like it.

“It’s Harry Norton,” he said, coming up to her. “Don’t you remember me? I’m your brother’s friend.”

He unwound his muffler and pushed back his hat to give her a better look at his face. It was a young face, pretty rather than handsome, fringed by fairish hair and with light blue eyes. He was smiling.

“Mr.… Norton,” she said, then fervently, “Mr. Norton! Of course! We danced at the Assembly Rooms! You’re George’s friend! How good it is to see you.”

He seemed surprised by the warmth of his reception, but he said easily, “We should be on our way at any moment. Perhaps we’ll meet again in Marlborough?”

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“At the Castle,” he replied.

“So am I!”

She was groping for a polite way of asking him to dine with her when he surprised her by taking the initiative. “I don’t suppose … that is … if you have nothing better to do, would you do me the honor of dining with me, Miss Vayle? I understand that the Castle keeps a very fine table.”

“Thank you. I should like that very much.”

“Then …” He looked at his watch and gave her a shy smile. “Shall we say nine o’clock, in the dining hall? That should give us plenty of time.”

“Nine o’clock it is,” she said, and beamed at him.

The Castle’s courtyard was ablaze with the lights from dozens of lanterns and pitch torches attached to its brick walls, and as Abbie alighted from her chaise, she took in the scene with mounting dismay. The yard was choked with vehicles that had been delayed by the mail-coach accident. From snatches of conversation, she deduced that all the inns and posthouses in and around Marlborough were packed to the rafters. It seemed that travelers had
decided to stay put rather than chance the highways in these unpredictable weather conditions. She heard the word
snow
, and her heart sank. If it snowed, she could be holed up in Marlborough for days on end.

Her hope of obtaining her own accommodations faded as people who were pushing out of the inn complained vociferously of having been turned away on such a filthy night when there were no beds to be had anywhere. She searched the crush of people for Mr. Norton’s face, but there was no sign of him. There was no one to help her but herself.

Squaring her shoulders, she offered Nan her arm. As they crossed the cobblestones, they happened to fall in behind no less a personage than the dowager Duchess of Champrey and her entourage of servants. Her Grace, a stately, horse-faced woman who towered over her footmen, had a formidable voice that soon sent anyone who got in her way scurrying for cover, and this included hapless members of the Castle’s staff who were bowing the duchess into the inn’s lobby. Though there was a crowd of distinguished guests at the counter, patiently waiting their turn, they parted without protest to allow the duchess to be attended to first.

Abbie kept her maid’s arm in a tight grip and stuck to the tail of Her Grace’s retinue as though she were part of it. Normally, she wouldn’t have had the nerve to jump her place in the queue, but she was desperate. She had a sick maid on her hands; she had a brother to rescue; it was possible that her every move was being watched, and she was terrified of what “they” might do next.

Barely moving her lips, she said to her maid, “Nan, keep your mouth shut, and take your cue from me.”

A worried look crossed Nan’s face, but she nodded to show that she understood.

The landlord came from behind the counter and led the duchess and her retinue away. Abbie found herself first in line with a crush of people at her back.

“Her Grace’s companion and maid,” she said on a sudden inspiration.

The harried clerk handed her a key. “In the attics. Her Grace really ought to advise us when she adds servants to her retinue.”

Abbie thanked the clerk, then grasped Nan’s arm and propelled her to the stairs.

The desk clerk had allotted them two rooms no bigger than closets with an adjoining door.

“Perfect,” said Abbie. “We’ll be quite comfortable here, Nan.”

“We won’t be comfortable in prison,” said Nan, “and that’s where they’ll put us for wot we done.”

“Nonsense,” said Abbie. “Why should they do that?”

“ ’Cos the duchess will ’ave to pay our shot.”

“I’ll tell them it was all a silly mistake, beginning right now, as soon as I find a chambermaid. You worry too much, Nan.”

Abbie spent the next little while finding a chambermaid to take care of their needs: their boxes had to be collected from their hired chaise; a fire had to be lit; a tray suitable for an invalid had to be sent up; and hot bricks to warm the beds. At first, the chambermaid, who was as harried as the desk clerk, was uncooperative, but her frown soon changed to smiles when she saw the half-sovereign Abbie proffered as a tip.

When Abbie descended the stairs to keep her appointment with Mr. Norton, she tried to look natural and managed to smile vaguely at an elderly gentleman who passed her on the way up, but she wasn’t nearly as composed as she pretended to be. The thought that

“he” might be watching her made her tremble all over. If it weren’t for Mr. Norton, she wouldn’t have left her chamber.

On entering the dining hall, she was dismayed to find that it was thronged with people. She scanned the tables for a glimpse of Mr. Norton. Eventually, she walked part way down one side of the hall, then the other. He was not there.

She retreated to the lobby and concealed herself in one of the curtained window alcoves while she waited for Mr. Norton to appear. There were plenty of people coming and going, but none of them looked suspicious.

She studied the hotel’s guests. Two gentlemen had just finished a game of chess, and they pushed back their chairs and began to idle their way toward the stairs. Her eyes moved to a young couple who seemed to be having an argument. The wife dabbed at her eyes with a scrap of lace handkerchief, then stormed out of the inn with her husband hurrying to catch up with her. Two more people who had been turned away to try their luck elsewhere, thought Abbie. A group of noisy young fops entered the coffee shop on a gale of laughter; another almost identical group left it shortly after. Liveried servants in coats of many colors were flitting about like exotic butterflies.

When time had passed, and there was no sign of Mr. Norton, she decided to take a more direct approach. But when she asked at the counter whether Mr. Norton had registered at the hotel, she discovered, to her great disappointment, that he had not. There were no rooms available, the clerk told her. In fact, there were no rooms available at any of the inns in Marlborough. The young gentleman had probably decided to try his luck at the next stop.

She was crossing to the stairs when she heard a familiar voice at her back.

“Abbie! It is you!”

Her jaw went slack, and she turned slowly. “Hugh!” she said. “What on earth are you doing here?”

As soon as Nemo had caught sight of Abbie, he left the two gentlemen who were playing chess and began to mount the stairs. He was no longer Harry Norton. His hair was dark and threaded with gray; his shoulders were slightly stooped. He was dressed like any other guest, and as he passed her on the stairs, she looked directly at him, but gave no sign of recognition. So much for her phenomenal memory for faces, he thought, and allowed himself a small, superior smile. He’d matched wits with the best. This poor woman did not know what she was up against.

The accident to the mail coach had served him well, but if there had been no accident, he would have found another way to meet her and set this up. If she had the book with her, he would find it.

He reckoned he had five or ten minutes to search her room before she returned. It would take her that long to discover that he wasn’t in the dining hall. She would wait for him, but not for long. Unchaperoned ladies did not loiter in public places. It just wasn’t done.

He’d planned ahead and arranged for the Lavender Room, one floor up, to be assigned to Miss Vayle and her maid. It was at the back of the hotel. After glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he knocked on the door, expecting the maid to answer. He would easily overpower her. But surprisingly there was no response.

The spare key he used to open the door had been given
to him by the desk clerk. He’d simply told the clerk that his key did not fit the lock on his door, and he’d held up the key to prove his point. He was in the Lavender Room, he’d told the clerk, and the keys were exchanged with no questions asked. If he’d been a thief, he could have robbed the hotel guests blind, the security was so lax.