“Ah, here you are,” he said languidly, wandering into the room and closing the door behind him. “I wonder if you are aware, my lord, that your daughter is making a journey?”
“What’s that?” Lord Barton said, looking up from some papers spread before him. “The girl’s probably still in bed. Last night was an exciting one for her, you know. I announced her betrothal to Uppington. Hope you slept well, Tate.”
“Oh, quite, I thank you,” Nicholas said, waving one dismissive hand. “But I have reason to believe that your surmisals about your daughter’s whereabouts are wrong. It is my guess that she is somewhere on the road between here and Gretna Green with Mr. Sidney Moreton and Mrs. Mannering.”
“What!” Lord Barton was on his feet in one bound, his fists slamming down onto the desk. “Eloping? With Moreton? The girl would never be so mad. Is this some joke, Tate?”
“I would suggest that you send to the stables to find out what carriage is missing,” Nicholas said.
Lord Barton was in a towering rage when news came back from the stables that Mr. Moreton’s traveling carriage had been taken out in the middle of the night and had not returned. Mr. Moreton’s own horses and coachman had gone with it. But the earl was ready to take the advice of the cooler Sir Harry Tate. It was as well that no one else in the house be told of what had happened, he advised. The travelers had a start of several hours, but it was not impossible to overtake them if Lord Barton took his lightest carriage, changed horses frequently, and stopped only for very short intervals to eat.
In fact, Sir Harry was kind enough to point out, he had a curricle all ready and waiting for him at that very moment. If Lord Barton cared to fetch a coat and his purse, they could be on their way almost immediately. They merely needed to leave the message that his lordship had to leave on urgent business and would be away perhaps for a night. Sir Harry would be glad to speak to Lord Toucher himself, and to Charles Dalrymple, about borrowing his conveyance.
Ten minutes later the curricle, with Nicholas holding the ribbons and Lord Barton seated beside him, was bowling down the driveway in the direction of the lodge. Matters were not quite as secretive as they seemed, Nicholas realized. It was soon going to be obvious to those left behind at Barton Abbey that he and the earl were not the only ones missing. But the plan was the best he had been able to come up with on the spur of the moment.
Indeed, he thought a little guiltily, he cared less about the reputation of Thelma than he did about catching up with Katherine so that he could tell her everything and somehow persuade her to forgive him and agree to marry him. And that was going to be no easy task. Let the man beside him worry about Thelma. In fact, it might be to her advantage to emerge from this day’s business with a somewhat tarnished reputation. There was a greater chance that she would be allowed to marry the man of her choice without having to go to Scotland for the purpose.
Damn Katherine Mannering! Why had she not simply told him what she was about to do? She had made love with him the previous night, listened to his marriage proposal, implied that she would hear his explanations and give him an answer over breakfast, and all the time she had known that she would be fleeing immediately after the ball.
Sometimes he could cheerfully wring her lovely neck. This happened to be one of those times.
Chapter 24
Kate and Thelma were sitting rather glumly in what passed for a private parlor in the Red Lion, an inn that was clean and respectable enough, but that was not one of the main posting houses on the road to London. A pot of tea and three empty cups stood on the table.
“That wheel will never be mended,” Thelma was saying for surely the dozenth time since they had been stranded a few hours before. “And we all might have been killed if that hedge had not been so thick that it prevented the rolling of the carriage. And Papa will catch up with us here, before we have gone much more than twenty miles from home. He will ring a thundering peal over my head and I shall have to marry Lord Uppington.”
Kate’s patience was wearing thin. But she tried to hold on to her temper. She tried to put herself in Thelma’s place and imagine her anxiety. Mr. Moreton’s carriage had lost a wheel, and the danger to their lives had not been exaggerated by Thelma. Even the hedge would not have saved them if the coachman had not already slowed the carriage ready to enter a village. As it was, they had been unharmed. There had just been a great deal of screaming from Thelma, who was convinced that highwaymen were responsible, and a great deal of loud, consolatory words from Mr. Moreton. And they had had to walk a few hundred yards to the inn.
“I can understand your worrying,” Kate said soothingly. “But that last point should not concern you at all. No one can force you to marry Lord Uppington. Besides, it is very unlikely that he will wish to marry you after your attempt to elope with Mr. Moreton.”
“Do you really think so?” Thelma asked hopefully.
They lapsed into silence again. Kate was in no mood to keep the conversation alive. She was feeling mortally depressed. Had he meant it last night when he had asked her to marry him? She had wanted so badly for him to mean it that she had persuaded herself that it could not be true. She wanted to be Harry’s wife. And he must love her just a little, surely. He could not have loved her the way he had the night before if he had merely been taking advantage of her presence in his room and her willingness.
When he had not pressed for her answer but had said that he must tell her something first the next morning and must then leave her for a few weeks, she had immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was regretting hasty words. She had had to protect her own feelings thus. But her assumption no longer seemed reasonable. Harry did not strike her as an impulsive man. And one would have to be very impulsive indeed to propose marriage to a woman and regret it the moment after.
She had not even told him she was leaving. He would naturally assume that her answer was no. And she would never see him again. She had stupidly, rashly given up the chance to marry the man she loved. She had, inexplicably enough, loved two men within a few weeks and had made love with both. The first had abandoned her the morning after, and the second she had left the morning after. Well, she could no longer call Nicholas a heartless wretch without labeling herself at the same time.
“Whatever can Sidney be doing?” Thelma said, jumping to her feet and beginning to pace the room. “Do you think the wheel will be repaired soon, Kate? Oh, I hear another carriage approaching. It is Papa. I know it is Papa.”
“It is coming from the opposite direction,” Kate pointed out. “This is the main road to London, you know. There is bound to be a fair amount of traffic on it.”
“Ohhh!” Thelma wailed. “We are not even on our way north yet. Does it really take so long to repair a wheel? Would you not think that Sidney could hire another carriage?”
Kate sat for a couple of minutes longer, but the pacing and fidgeting and sighing of her companion drove her to her own feet eventually.
“I shall go outside into the stableyard and see what I can find out,” she said. “Perhaps if the delay is going to be much longer we can take a walk along the village street. You will feel better in the fresh air.”
“No, I will not,” Thelma wailed. “Papa will be here soon.”
Kate opened the door of the parlor and stepped outside into the passageway. She was in sight of the taproom, where the occupant of the newly arrived carriage was standing talking to the innkeeper, facing half toward her. She gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. Harry? He had come?
But even as the thought flashed into her mind, she frowned and looked more closely. No, he was not Harry. Her brain must be addled. But he looked very like: the same height and dark wavy hair, the same strong features. But this man was younger, little more than a boy, in fact. And his face was open and pleasing. He did not have the arrogant, slightly bored expression that was usual with Harry.
Kate must have been standing and staring for several seconds. If the passageway had not been somewhat dark, she would surely have been observed. She gave herself a shake and walked forward, intending to go around the two men and out into the stableyard beyond. The innkeeper’s words stopped her, however.
“Here is a lady traveling out of Dorset,” he said. “She can tell you if I am right or not. Do you know Barton Abbey, miss? Would you say it is a little more than twenty miles away?”
