At Richard’s call, the man in black darted away. He slipped easily between a carriage and a donkey cart to cross through the traffic. For a man of his weight, the stranger was very quick upon his feet. Richard could hear Beaufort shouting orders to Graham and noted when Beaufort turned down a different street in order to intercept the man they were chasing.
As he overtook Emma, Richard shouted “Stay! Graham, she is yours!”
Richard ignored the burning in his lungs as he, too, worked his way between several wagons. He could now tell that the man’s clothes were not black, but rather a dark brown. Suddenly, the stranger pulled up and turned with a gun in his hand to take aim at Richard. Orson dove to the side, yelling to all in the vicinity to take cover. “Stay down!” he yelled, as he rose to give pursuit again, but the man was no longer in sight. “Where the hell?” he groused as he looked this way and that.
Moving more cautiously than he had previously, he began to check each of the buildings near where he had last seen the man, but nothing. It was as if his attacker had vanished into thin air. Beaufort appeared at the other end of the street and shrugged, meaning no one had come past Richard’s friend.
Orson motioned to several buildings. A stable. Some sort of charity house. A school. A blacksmith. He and Beaufort worked instinctively, with little conversation, to examine each, but a quarter hour later, they stood together on the outskirts of Bletchley, guns in hand, but no suspect within sight. A few people went about their business, but none of them was a stocky-built man, wearing dark clothing.
“Where in the world did he go?” Beaufort asked as Richard’s friend turned in a slow circle. “No one! Anywhere! How is that possible, Orson? We were on his heels and then he was gone!”
“Either we are becoming slower or the reprehensible creatures we chase are becoming faster,” Richard declared as he too scanned all the buildings a final time. “I suppose I should discover what tick lodged in Lady Emma’s head to make her wish to confront a stranger.”
“Perhaps a similar confrontation began this madness,” Beaufort suggested. As they started back to where Graham waited with Lady Emma, his friend said, “So you two decided to return to London without settling things between you?”
“It was her ladyship’s wish,” Richard admitted lamely.
“Are you assured?” Beaufort asked.
“I performed dastardly,” Richard made his explanation, for he knew Beaufort would return to the subject again and again until he knew it all, “and there were tears in her eyes, though I attempted not to look too closely at her.”
“Did the two of you at least decide where you are to set her down in London? Where will she go?” Beaufort asked.
“The lady is of age, and I am not a male relative; therefore, I have no say in the matter. I am just the man who found her after she had been attacked. Anyone else, except an idiot of my nature, would simply have seen her home and in the care of her servants.”
“You are not anyone else, and, most assuredly, not an idiot, when it comes to the woman,” Beaufort argued. “The lady simply does not know up from down.”
“In my mind, I realize what you say is true,” Richard said with a shrug of resignation. “Obviously, until she recovers her memory, Lady Emma does not wish a relationship with me: I remind her of the worst night of her life.”
When Lords Orsonand Beaufort returned and announced they had lost sight of the stranger, Emma realized she had lost an opportunity to learn why she had proven to be the victim of such a heinous crime. The idea that she could not be trusted with her own choices had become more and more troublesome for her. Assuredly, she knew someone or, rather, a crime had robbed her of part of her memories, but should not her instincts have remained in place? And her instincts said, with the man’s disappearance, her hopes of a resolution to this mystery had also vanished.
“Please tell me you truly did not mean to confront a stranger and accuse him of your attack?” Lord Orson demanded as he approached.
Emma understood his frustration, but her world was in such a state of upheaval, she could barely function, and there was no one who truly understood the turmoil churning inside her. “What I planned, my lord...well, let us say I release you from any obligation you think you owe me. You have expressed yourself perfectly, on more than one occasion, on my ‘lack of reason.’ I could not consult you on the matter, for you were too busy with your burst of ill humor and left me alone in the coach. You took no notice of the man watching our carriage when you darted away to speak to your friends. Only me, my lord. I wasthe only one who noticed a stranger watching our comings and goings. When I approached, the stranger did not run away from me. He ran only from you, which to me says he was up to no good or he would have stayed to speak to you.”
She could view Lord Orson’s frustration, but Emma had tired of this madness. She turned to Lord Graham. “Pardon, my lord, might I impose on you to secure a coach and driver for me so I might travel to London? I shall see you are properly reimbursed for your kindness.”
Graham glanced to Lord Orson, but he did not wait for Richard’s opinion, “You may rejoin Beaufort and me, my lady, or if such is not to your liking, I will employ a separate carriage for you.”
“Though you and Lord Beaufort have been most kind, my lord, I would not wish you to be required later to answer to Lord Orson’s complaints,” she told the man, while Beaufort jabbed Orson in the ribs with his elbow, in an “I told you so” manner.
She turned to Lord Orson to say, “I am forever in your debt, my lord. You saved me when others would not. You pressed your family to assist me, and you have taken on the task to keep me safe. However, there is only one of two ways this madness will end: Either I shall remember who exacted harm upon me and see the person brought to justice, or I shall spend my life with this cloud hanging over my head until I reach an early grave.”
In the end,Beaufort decided to return to London in Lord Orson’s coach, while Emma joined Lord Graham in Beaufort’s carriage. Beaufort had insisted that he and Orson speak to the officials regarding someone shooting at them, but Emma had heard little of the conversation meant to settle the matter. It was all so deeply sad, for she had bought into the idea of becoming one ofLord Duncan’s “daughters”—the wife of one of the man’s “sons.” Moreover, she had always desired a large family—any family, for that matter, but definitely a large one—for as long as she could recall. For more than the last decade. All her days in England, such had been her most private prayer.
“I shall be waiting in the carriage, my lord,” she told Lord Graham. “I am at your disposal when you are prepared to depart.”
“Did you see anything of the man that might be of use to Orson in discovering the identity of your attacker?” Graham asked as her trunk was placed on Beaufort’s coach, and Lord Beaufort’s things transferred to Orson’s carriage.
“Nothing,” she said, her energy and her desire drained by her melancholy. “His gaze was steady and occasionally his lips twitched in apparent amusement. He apparently found it amusing that I meant to challenge him.” She turned her gaze on Lord Graham’s now-familiar countenance. “For a few elongated seconds the man feared me. I know that sounds absurd, but for the passage of a handful of heartbeats, the power had shifted to me. Then, Lord Orson called my name, and I saw relief arrive on the stranger’s features. He would not be held accountable by me. I knew without a doubt he had been my attacker, and for a short glitch in time, he feared me. Then Lord Orson called, and he was again free.”
Lord Graham studied her carefully in that manner she had become accustomed to know was his way of seeing the world, before he said, “Someday, I pray to hold my mother accountable in the same manner. Unlike your attacker, she did not purposely harm me—did not drop me with the intention to maim me, but she never once looked back with a care for my safety or to answer my cries of pain. She kept walking away from me, though I called out to her over and over again.” He shook his head as if his lordship released the image of the scene from his mind. “In myopinion, you have taken your tormentor’s measure and found him wanting. I will rejoice when I can say the same. Well done, my lady. You are well on your way to remembering it all.”
“You are the most remarkable man, my lord,” she pronounced as he climbed into the carriage with her.
“But I am not Orson,” he said as he settled upon the opposing bench.
Emma smiled sadly. “No, I fear not. Yet, even my admiration for Lord Orson cannot hide his actions of late, which, most assuredly, do not impress me in the least.”
