Ransom Redeemed (11 page)

"I also came to be sure you are in good health, of course."

"You have a very strange look on your face, Ransom. Is there something more? You have more bad news for me, perhaps"

"None that I can think of."

Her face had crumpled slightly, her lips sagged at the corners. "I thought you came to tell me that your father's mousy young bride is about to give him yet another child."

"No. As far as I know, Olivia has birthed only one son. John Paul. I know of none others on the horizon."

She studied his face, as if she might catch him in a lie, then, satisfied, collected her breath, tightened her mouth and raised her chin. "Ha! Biblical names. How ironic! There will be more, no doubt, now that she has her feet under the table and
him
around her finger. I daresay she will produce a child a year and you will fall even farther in his order of consideration."

After all this time her words should not have so much power to hurt, but despite the armor of scar-tissue they still wormed their way in. His mother knew how to crawl under his skin and she, unlike the ghost of Sally White, didn't have to wait until he fell asleep to do it.

"I knew, the minute I saw that woman he married, that she had thoroughly pulled the fleece over his eyes. Never underestimate a quiet, drab woman," she added. "Those that pretend to be good and virtuous are worse than any."

"Yes, mama." Too long in her presence made him hot and sick, so he was already making his way to the door. "I'll try to call in more often now that Raven has gone back to the country and—"

"Don't put yourself out if you're too busy. I am not completely alone, you know." She flounced back to her warm fire, recovering her usual poise and carefully controlled nonchalance. "My own children may have deserted me, but I have a girl who visits several times a week."

"A girl?" He stopped and looked back at his mother. "What girl?" Ransom was suspicious of any stranger forming a connection to Lady Charlotte. He knew his mother could be indiscrete and overly-familiar with only a slight acquaintance, especially if they made themselves "useful" to her.

"A very old friend of your sister's, if you must know. A penniless spinster with no prospects, but well-bred. She is quite respectable, I assure you."

Penniless, eh? So she was sniffing after some Deverell money, whoever she was. He frowned. "I'd like to know who this person is. Raven has never mentioned this friend to me." Or had she? He tried to remember. Raven was a sociable creature certainly, but he could not recall meeting any particular female friend in her company. If she was a "very old" friend, would he not have been introduced by his sister?

"It doesn't matter who she is. When my own children are too busy to visit, I am grateful to have
any
callers." His mother now arranged herself gracefully on a Grecian chaise by the fire, her eyelids sleepily lowered, her long hands limp against the cushions. "This time of year is so dreary until the Season begins and any company is preferable to none. Well, be gone then about your wretched business. Far be it for me to keep you too long when you are needed to man the oars for your despicable father. You have done your cruel deed and cast your dagger into my heart, which you were no doubt sent to do. Now you may retreat, unless you want to watch me bleed."

Ransom bowed to his mother and made a hasty departure, before he might be tempted to say something that was even less "tactful".

* * * *

Mary tapped lightly at the door to the suite and soon heard a weary, "Enter."

She peeped in and saw Lady Charlotte draped elegantly upon the chaise with a handkerchief clutched over her eyes. "Bring me the ice-pack," she muttered. "It took you long enough, girl. I didn't realize you had to go to Antarctica to fetch the ice."

"Lady Charlotte, it's me, Mary." She came all the way in and quietly closed the door.

"Oh." The handkerchief was lowered, and two limp eyes surveyed her morosely. "I cannot think where the dratted maid has got to. My head feels likely to burst at any moment. It seems nobody cares for my health and I am left here to die alone."

Mary smiled cheerfully as she crossed the room to the window. "But I am here now so you are not alone. And you look very well, Lady Charlotte, far from the shadows of death."

The woman sighed heavily and dropped her handkerchief to her lap.

"I'm sure the maid will return shortly," Mary added, "and in the meantime, I have bought a new book to read to you—"

"Heavens, girl, I cannot hear you read today. Not one of those novels full of too many characters and too much plot! So many words! All those long names to remember! It is beyond me to concentrate. I am far too troubled."

Mary set her basket down on the table by the window and was in the process of untying her bonnet ribbons when she noticed a gentleman's hat and gloves. "Oh. You have another caller, Lady Charlotte?" It was not rare for Raven's mother to entertain gentlemen occasionally in her suite of rooms at Mivart's Hotel, but she seldom allowed those appointments to overlap with Mary's afternoon visits.

"My wretched son," the lady exclaimed. "In such haste to leave me that he left his hat behind I see."

She felt her pulse skip. "I did not know you expected your son today." Perhaps it was another son. There were several, after all.

But the next word snatched that hope away and the man she'd tried to avoid thinking about for two days was before her again. Or rather his hat and gloves were.

"Ransom comes and goes as he pleases. I can expect him for weeks and see neither hide nor hair. Then, when I have abandoned all hope, he appears without the slightest apology for his absence, to pass on bad news and— on his father's behalf no doubt— to be sure I am behaving myself. To report my comings and goings like a spy. He cares nothing for my health and happiness. Just like his father."

"He came to give you bad news, your ladyship?" She gripped the edge of the table.

"He will not take me into Oxfordshire to visit his sister until next summer. Something he took ruthless delight in telling me."

Mary's heart beat resumed a regular pace.

But why would it matter if she encountered Ransom Deverell again? Really there was no need to make so much of it. She was in danger of giving their strange meeting more significance than it was worth, if she quaked in trepidation at the mere thought of seeing him a second time. She was turning into Violet— oops, Violette— with her unhinged imagination.

Her gaze lingered over his gloves. Grey leather, very fine, folded over and tossed down beside his upturned hat. What if he came back for them?

"Perhaps, if you have such a sore head and no need of me today—"

"But you're here now and you might as well make use of yourself, Mary. I suppose you can read to me from
Le Follet
. It is there on the windowsill ,and I should like to hear about the new Parisian fashions. That is the only thing I can bear when I am ill. It might lift my spirits."

Well, Deverell very probably had many hats and gloves at his disposal and no need to make a special trip back for those he'd left behind. If he was so eager to leave his mother's company, he would doubtless be in no rush to come back.

Quietly celebrating her narrow escape, Mary finally released the edge of the table from her fierce grip, took the magazine from the windowsill and sat in a chair across the hearth from her ladyship's chaise. As usual there followed a short summary of all Lady Charlotte's most current aches and pains, while Mary listened patiently, giving what little support she could. Most of the time she suspected her quiet replies were not heard, and probably not needed, but she gave them anyway.

Lady Charlotte was not the most likeable of people and could be very challenging when in one of her moods, but Mary felt some sympathy for her. She did seem to be rather deserted by her children, although the lady did nothing to encourage their company. She was not the sort to apologize for past mistakes, forgive others readily for theirs, or hold out comforting arms. In fact, she was probably the most unmotherly mother Mary had ever known, and yet there was a proud, wounded sadness about her, which suggested that while she was aware of this failing she simply didn't know any other way to be.

Mary knew what it was to harden ones shell out of necessity— for one's very own survival— and then to have others misunderstand.

She had just opened the magazine and begun to read aloud when the door burst open.

"Hellfire, I left my bloody hat behind, didn't I?"

Chapter Ten

He stopped short and stared, one hand still on the door, an ice pack in the other.

"What the devil and his minions are you doing here?"

Miss Mary Ashford sat there, just as prim as you please, by his mother's fire, with a ladies' magazine open on her lap. For the life of him he couldn't make sense of her appearance there at that moment. He even thought his eyes deceived him.

But no, he was fairly sure he was not drunk or dreaming.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, or thereabouts and she was sitting in his mother's parlor as if it was the most natural place for her to be. There on the table beside his hat and gloves was her blue bonnet— the same one he saw her in the other morning, when she left that book for him with Miggs and he followed her to a pawnbroker's.

"Ransom!" his mother exclaimed. "Bring that ice pack to me at once. I suppose you were flirting with the hotel maid again, which would explain her impertinent tardiness."

He shut the door and crossed the carpet, keeping his eyes on Miss Ashford who closed her magazine and stood. But before she could speak his mother added, "This is Raven's friend who visits me. The one I told you about."

"Ah." He smirked. "The penniless spinster."

His mother, naturally, would not be at all embarrassed by the description she'd used. Neither, it seemed, was Miss Ashford, who gave a wry smile and a short curtsey. "Indeed, sir. That would be me."

So she was Raven's friend. Is that where he'd heard her name before? What a tiny world it was, after all. He was still marveling over the coincidence, when his mother yelled again,

"Ransom! The ice pack, if you please, before it all melts!" She flung out her arm as if it took all her strength to make the gesture and it might very well be her last. He finally passed the cold bag of ice to her, having crushed it quite severely in his hand.

"Miss Ashford, you did not mention being acquainted with my family when we met on that recent Wednesday." No, she had teased him instead. Called him Mr. Drivel and claimed never to have heard of him.

"It did not occur to me that you were one of the same Deverells." Her eyes were wide, clear grey pools. All innocence.

"Really? What other Deverell might I be?"

"Do fetch my son's hat, Mary. Let him be gone again so we can have peace, or my head will never recover."

Miss Ashford quickly obeyed, collecting his hat and gloves from the table, but Ransom was no longer in great hurry to leave. He simply dropped his seat into the nearest chair and when she handed the forgotten items to him, he set the hat over his knee and exclaimed, "As you said, mama, I have not spent as much time with you as I should. Perhaps leaving my hat behind was an unconscious admission of guilt, ensuring I must return."

"But I don't need you now. I have Mary. Sit, Mary! You know I don't like it when you hover. It makes the room untidy."

Once again Miss Ashford calmly did as she was ordered without comment. Ransom was amused. "Yes, I can see she must be a vast improvement on my uncouth, disobedient company. Miss Ashford appears to be well trained." He knew there must be a reason behind this quiet compliance from a woman he knew to be quick witted, much too intelligent and opinionated to tolerate his mother's nonsense, and not in the least subservient.

"Since when have you felt guilt?" his mother demanded sharply, rings and bracelets sparkling, as her clawed fingers clasped the ice bag to her brow. "You have no conscience, so don't pretend you're sitting there now because you feel sorry."

"You've caught me, mama. Of course I have no conscience. I learned from the best." He smiled broadly. "As a matter of fact it's raining like billy-ho out there and I'd rather wait out the worst of it, so this delay is entirely for my own selfish convenience. But I suppose, in return for putting up with me, I can escort Miss Ashford home, when she is ready to leave."

Those grey eyes turned to him with surprise. She looked younger and less sinister today, out of her usual grim habitat. Perhaps it was the light in his mother's suite. This afternoon she was neither shrouded in cobwebs nor drenched in rain.

"It shouldn't put me out too much," he added with a sigh. "It's not
too
far out of my way. She needn't think I'll make a habit of it. Gallant gestures are hardly my province."

After a slight pause to find her place again, his mother's obliging visitor resumed reading from the ladies' magazine. It was not long, however, before she was interrupted in the midst of a sentence, proving that she was not being listened to by Lady Charlotte, any more than she was by him.

"Where did you meet my son, Mary? You did not mention it to me."

She looked up from the magazine, but Ransom replied before she could. "I met Miss Ashford in the bookshop where she works."

"A bookshop?" Lady Charlotte lowered her ice pack. "
Works?
I did not know this, Mary."

"Indeed, madam. And I live there too."

"You live.
In.
The shop?" Each word fell like a heavy weight.

"Above the shop, your ladyship."

"How ghastly!"

"Not at all. We are quite cozy there, my sister and I. A dear friend of my uncle's offered us the rooms when our father died, and since my uncle had passed on to me his shares in the bookshop it made a sound solution to the problem of our living arrangements."

"But that is very odd for two genteel, well-bred young women. I knew your family had fallen on hard times, but I cannot imagine why I did not know the very depths to which you are sunk."

"I doubt you ever asked her," Ransom muttered.

"It is not at all a bad place to live," the young woman said firmly, "and I prefer not to think of it as
sunken depths
, madam. We are still, currently, afloat." A very little smile tugged at her lips. "I do not believe anything is ever sunk beyond rescue."

Ransom knew she referred to his mind, of course, because that is how he had described it in his note when he returned the books.

That mercury gaze returned once again to the magazine, she read on.

Cunning wench.

He relaxed deeper into the chair with one leg stretched out, fingers steepled under his chin. He watched her thoughtfully, still trying to make sense of why she was there. Why she was
really
there. Surely nobody would voluntarily seek out Lady Charlotte's company and with Raven no longer in London, Miss Ashford had no other connection to the family. There must be an ulterior motive to her presence.

His mother hadn't lost her appalled expression, her thoughts obviously stuck on the subject of Mary Ashford's living arrangements. Lady Charlotte was never comfortable around great poverty, perhaps because it reminded her of where she might be if not for her former husband's financial generosity. She liked to complain of being "poor" and hard done by, but of course she was not. Indeed she was fortunate that True Deverell had never cut her off, despite all the terrible things she said of him. So when faced with the evidence of real hardship she froze, became almost incapacitated.

Miss Ashford pretended not to notice and read on in a low, pleasing voice, describing the latest hideous fashions of Paris, as if this was the most important news ever put to print.

It might be quite pleasing to have her read to him too, he decided, for she could make the dullest of articles sound interesting. But he would enjoy it more if they were alone together. Although he'd be in danger of falling asleep, if he could take her calm, melodious voice with him into his dreams, it might not be so bad. Would she protect him from Sally White too, as she saved him from Belle?

No. She thought he should stand up for himself instead of running away from the demons that pursued him. Not that she'd used those particular words; it was what she meant. He could pretend to her that he didn't understand, but he could not pretend to himself.

The fact that she had known who he was when they met, cast a thoroughly new light on their encounter and that conversation.

Before too long his mother interrupted again. "I thought Lord Ashford left some provision for your living arrangements when he died, Mary. I cannot think he would approve of his daughters in a
bookshop
." She spoke the words as if they might be a euphemism for a brothel.

"Whether he would approve or not, we had nowhere else to go. And I'm afraid he would have approved even less of the alternatives."

"But you are a Baron's daughter and educated. A governess post with a good family would be far more respectable for you. Far better than to be in trade."

"I would not like to be separated from my sister, madam. She has been left in my charge, and I promised to take care of her."

"Surely you could find some distant relative or childless couple to take her in. Little girls are always wanted as they are less trouble than boys."

"My sister is almost twenty, Lady Charlotte, not a child."

"Goodness gracious! Then she can fend for herself. Can you not get her married off? I suppose you have nothing much in the way of a dowry to offer, but perhaps a dreary little clerk of some sort will take her for a small sum."

"He very well might." Miss Ashford's lips drew another swift smile. "But she would never take
him
for anything less than love. I'm afraid my sister has romantic ideas."

"Then she'd better come to her senses," his mother scoffed. "You're both too poor to have that luxury, and in another few years she will be in danger of losing her bloom too. Like you."

Now he could see that Miss Ashford's unruffled demeanor was endangered, as if she was a hedgehog and his mother's questions and comments poked at her like a sharp stick. Her expression became very proud. Her spikes were up.

His mother, of course, had no capacity for reading another person's posture or their expression. "I cannot think why Raven never told me of this dire situation."

"Because I asked her not to, madam. I prefer to keep such matters private. I'm sure you understand."

But, of course, Ransom knew his mother would not understand that either. Very little about her own life was private. Discretion had never been hers in great commodity and when she married True Deverell she lost any chance she might have had for a quiet life. Not, Ransom suspected, that she had ever wanted one. Lady Charlotte thrived on drama and if nobody was interested in her comings and goings anymore she would very probably shrivel away and die. In the meantime, however, she complained at every opportunity about the society matrons who gave her the cut, and the vile gossips who, she was certain, were merely jealous of her continued good looks.

He watched as Miss Ashford bent over the magazine and continued reading aloud. There had been just the hint of a blush— suggestive of a mounting temper— but it was gone now already.

A few days ago in that dusty little shop he had asked her, "
What keeps you so busy then?"

To which she'd replied, "
The sheer effort it takes for a small, unimportant woman to survive. Not everybody has the liberty of running away from their problems
."

So apparently Miss Mary Ashford had nobody to go to with her troubles. That balding, bespectacled fellow with his nose in a book and buttery finger marks on the skewed knot of his cravat, was not likely to provide much guidance. In fact, he did not seem to be aware of much at all going on around him. Clearly she was left alone to manage her sister.

Ransom's thoughts turned to his own siblings— full and half-blood— and their many trials and tribulations, which had all, lately, been laid at his door.

He and Miss Ashford had something in common after all. Would she not be surprised to know it?

Studying her profile, he tried to understand what it was about her that drew his attention and held it. Her hair was smooth, straight and dark brown, tied back in a knot of some sort. There was no hint of a curl, no ringlets like those favored by some young women. Her nose was slender with a gentle, aquiline slope; her skin had a slightly olive tone and that, in addition to her solemn face and graceful composure gave her the look of a Renaissance Madonna in an oil painting.

And that was it! Now he knew what it was that had fascinated him.

La Contessa.

But how could that be?

He didn't realize he'd been tapping his fingers on his hat, until she shot him a cross scowl. At once he stopped and curled his fingers into a fist.

"Ransom, stop fidgeting and distracting Miss Ashford," his mother exclaimed. "You take after your father with that tiresome, vulgar inability to sit still. You disrupt the serenity of a room simply by being in it."

Abruptly he got up.

Both women looked at him expectantly.

"I'm sorry," he muttered stiffly. "I just remembered some business I must take care of today. Excuse me." With that he left the room hurriedly, this time taking his hat and gloves with him.

* * * *

Well, she thought, with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment, that was over with.

"Now you see what I mean, Mary. He comes and goes quite without warning, whenever the mood betakes him."

"Yes. I see."

"So very rude and shamefully ill-bred. His father's influence. I was never allowed to interfere in the raising of my own children. I was shut out of their lives. Just another of
his
cruel strikes against me."

Mary had managed not to look at Ransom too much, to keep her mind on the article she read for Lady Charlotte, but his presence had a fairly calamitous affect on her senses. It made his every slightest move echo in her ears, so that she found herself talking louder to drown it out. Even now that he'd left she remained distracted.

On this occasion he was dressed properly and decently. Very elegantly, in fact. Richly. But he wore those fine clothes with a casual, understated carelessness. He was a tall, dark, broad-shouldered shape in her peripheral vision. A menacing shape she could not ignore.

After he left, his mother could not return her attention to the fashions of Paris. She seemed unduly perturbed by the idea of Mary living above a shop, although it was unclear which part of this discovery she found most dreadful. Perhaps she saw it as affecting her own circumstances in some way. But if her son hadn't raised the subject she would never have known about those living arrangements, for Mary did not like to talk about herself and Lady Charlotte seldom liked to talk about anything but her own problems. Mary had hoped to maintain some last little vestige of dignity for the remains of her family for as long as possible. Now, thanks to Ransom Deverell's imprudent mouth, the sad facts were exposed to the least discreet person she knew.

For the past few years, since her father's death, Mary had kept up appearances as best she could. Whenever she went out she made sure to dress neatly, so that if she met anyone she knew they would be none the wiser. Most people were aware that the Ashfords had lost their estate, many knew about Uncle Hugo, but they did not need to know all the details of how Mary and her sister lived now. When she encountered old acquaintances in the street, Mary was quick to inquire into their health, carefully remembering the names of their children and spouses, even their dogs, rapidly leading the conversation so that they had slim chance of quizzing her in return. It was always her hope that they would walk on thinking how well she looked and how happy she seemed. Even if that thought was promptly followed by the modifier, "all things considered".

But these visits to Lady Charlotte gave Mary the opportunity to converse with someone who had no idea about that cramped, lumpy bed she shared with her sister, or of the holes in her stockings and the hunger pains in her stomach— a lady who was blissfully ignorant of most things Mary had to face every day. For that short time in Lady Charlotte's presence, where a hangnail was often the most pressing problem, she could forget it all herself and be immersed in the respite of silly nothingness.

Now all that was spoiled. In one sentence, Ransom Deverell had pulled down the curtain behind which she hid her true circumstances and exposed her pitiful plight.

Lady Charlotte "concerned", Mary now learned, was much worse than Lady Charlotte unaware or detached from reality. Raven had often told her that, but then her friend said a lot of things about her mother— particularly when in a temper— and Mary had not understood exactly what she meant. After all, Mary had been without a mother for many years and secretly thought Raven complained more than she should about her own.

But she was about to find herself the target of what Raven termed Lady Charlotte's "clucking".

"To think of you abandoned to the life of a shopkeeper, Mary! I wonder at my daughter leaving you behind when she went off to Oxfordshire. Some friend she has been."

"Madam, your daughter has remained a true friend to me through some very challenging times, and when many others were less than kind. For that I will always be grateful."

"Now she has deserted you, just as she deserted me. We are abandoned as she goes on with her life away from us."

Mary smiled. "We have her letters to entertain us, Lady Charlotte."

"Hmph. My daughter is a sadly infrequent correspondent, and she has a lazy penmanship that causes me to squint. And I have more than enough lines about my eyes already." The lady sighed deeply, sinking against the rolled arm of the chaise. "Raven has always said she prefers living her life, rather than wasting time writing about it. Now, of course, she has so much life to live while you and I have none."

"Then, until she is able to return to London for a visit, we must take consolation in the company of each other, Lady Charlotte."

This did not seem to be much compensation. "Now my son refuses to take me to Greyledge this winter. It is ridiculous that I am trapped here and cannot be there for my daughter in her time of need."

"But travel is most unreliable this time of year. I suppose he thinks of your comfort, Lady Charlotte."

"My comfort, indeed! Ransom thinks only of himself. Just like his father, he has no time for me. None of my children care what becomes of me as I sit here all alone with nothing and nobody of any consequence to help fill my days."

Mary might have been insulted, if she was not so relieved that her ladyship had, for the time being, forgotten about the bookshop. Now, thankfully, Mary was back in her small role at the side of somebody else's stage, and Lady Charlotte embarked upon one of her favorite complaints about uncaring offspring, her hateful former husband, her deceased father, and anybody else that had ever slighted her.

Then, suddenly, she said, "You shall travel with me to Greyledge, Mary. We'll go together and surprise Raven. I shall not mind the journey if I have a companion."

"Oh, Lady Charlotte, I do not think that is a good idea. Your son does not think you should—"

"Pah! What does he know? Men know nothing of childbirth."

But Mary had no intention of going where she was not invited. She could well imagine Raven's expression if they turned up at Greyledge unexpected, and the last letter from her friend had hinted at great hopes for a very quiet, calm, peaceful Yuletide season at the estate.

Besides, Mary had travelled into Oxfordshire with Lady Charlotte once three years ago and still had not fully recovered from the embarrassment caused by listening to the lady berate servants, coachmen, toll-keepers, grooms and innkeepers' wives— whom she found "slovenly, bacon-faced and ill-kempt"— along their route.

Mary looked down at the magazine in her lap, searching desperately for a distraction. "Goodness what a lovely pattern for a ball gown. Princess-line with the bodice and skirt in one piece. I have never seen such a dress. I wonder if it might suit my sister, but I suppose it would require a great many yards of material."

Lady Charlotte demanded to see the picture so that she could give her own opinion— even though she had never met Violet.

This was Mary's chance to divert her ladyship's attention and her "clucking". Violet, at least, could benefit from it, while Mary would only chafe under the attention. She would much rather be left to the quiet enjoyment of a good novel.

So she told Lady Charlotte all about her idea to give Violet an outing into society and her hopes of finding her sister a good match. Nobody enjoyed the prospect of meddling, matchmaking and a fashionable foray, quite so much as Lady Charlotte, and she was soon in a much better humor, quite forgetting her sore head.

When Mary left Mivart's Hotel a little over half an hour later, she found a Hansom cab waiting in the street. The driver leapt forward to greet her just as she took the last step down to the wet pavement.

"Are you Miss Ashford?"

She halted, gripping her basket before her. "I am."

"Ah, good!" He tipped his hat to her. "A gentleman sent me here to wait for you, Miss. He said you would be the young lady in the blue bonnet, and he paid the fee for your journey in advance."

She was so startled she didn't know what to say for a moment. "This gentleman..." she managed finally, "did he give his name?"

"He said he was the King of Siam, miss. I don't reckon that was entirely honest, but since he paid me double the fee, I didn't think it right to argue."

Mary looked up at the grim sky and blinked against the rain which had just begun again. "It is so very damp out, I shall accept his generosity." She knew when to be practical, put her emotions aside— and ignore her pride a little. After all, it wasn't as if anybody would see her accepting the favor. The sky was already getting dark and she did not relish the thought of walking all the way home.

"Very good, miss. I'm glad you are agreeable, for he said he would chase me down if I didn't succeed in my mission of transporting you safely."

"Did he indeed?" Stepping up into the seat, she just happened to glance out through the side window and, in the soft glow of a street lamp, observed a man on horseback turning away down a side street. She didn't have to see his face to know it was Ransom Deverell. He must have been waiting around all this time in the rain, instead of dashing off to that important business he supposedly remembered.

How very odd. Even stranger that he didn't wait a moment longer to let her thank him. If she had not accepted the offer of a Hansom cab, would he have ridden after her?

But she soon had something else to worry about, when she realized that wherever the driver was taking her, it was not to Trinity Place and
Beloved Books
. She leaned out, looking back to shout. Alas, the driver, sitting high up behind the cab, was whistling too loudly to hear, and had his collar up against the rain. Mary got the sense that he
would
not h
ave heard her even if he could.