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Moulder’s mouth opened. “I—”
“We also have our three lady’s maids,” Megs continued, handing the candle back to the butler as he snapped his mouth shut, “four footmen between ours and my great-aunt’s, and the two coachmen. Great-Aunt Elvina would insist on her own carriage, although I have to admit I’m not sure how we’d have all fit in only one carriage anyway.”
“It would never have worked,” Sarah said. “And your aunt snores.”
Megs shrugged. “True.” She turned back to the butler. “Naturally we brought Higgins the gardener and Charlie the bootblack boy because he is such a dear and because he’s Higgins’s nephew and rather attached to him. Oh, and Her Grace, who is in a delicate condition and appears to take only chicken livers well minced and simmered in white wine these days. Now, have you got all that?”
Moulder goggled. “Ah …”
“Wonderful.” Megs shot him another smile. “Where is my husband?”
Alarm seemed to break through the butler’s confusion. “Mr. St. John is in the library, m’lady, but he’s—”
“No, no!” Megs patted the air reassuringly. “No need to show me. I’m sure Sarah and I can find the library all by ourselves. Best you deal with my aunt’s needs and see to the servants’ supper—and Her Grace’s. It was such a very long journey, you know.”
She picked up the lit candelabra and marched up the stairs.
Sarah trotted up beside her, chuckling under her breath. “Luckily you’ve started in the right direction, at least. The library, if I remember correctly, is on the first floor, second door on the left.”
“Oh, good,” Megs muttered. Having once screwed her courage to this point, it would be fatal to back down now. “I’m sure you’re looking forward to seeing your brother again just as much as I.”
“Naturally,” Sarah murmured. “But I won’t be so gauche as to ruin your reunion with Godric.”
Megs stopped on the first-floor landing. “What?”
“Tomorrow morning is soon enough to see my brother.” Sarah smiled gently from three steps below. “I’ll go help with Great-Aunt Elvina.”
that, he swung shut the home’s door, turned, and sprinted toward his town house.
LADY MARGARET ST. John started shaking the moment her carriage left St. Giles. The Ghost had been so large, so frighteningly deadly in his movements. When he’d advanced on her, his bloody swords gripped in his big, leather-clad hands and his eyes glinting behind his grotesque mask, it had been all she could do to hold herself still.
Megs inhaled, trying to quiet the quicksilver racing through her veins. She’d spent two years hating the man, but she’d never expected, when she finally met him, to feel so … so …
So alive.
She glanced down at the heavy pistols in her lap and then across the carriage to her dear friend and sister-in-law, Sarah St. John. “I’m sorry. That was …”
“An idiotic idea?” Sarah arched one light brown eyebrow. Her straight-as-a-pin hair varied from mouse-brown to the lightest shade of gold and was tucked back into a sedate and very orderly knot at the back of her head.
In contrast, Megs’s own dark, curly hair had mostly escaped from its pins hours ago and was now waving about her face like a tentacled sea monster.
Megs frowned. “Well, I don’t know if idiotic is quite—”
“Addled?” Sarah supplied crisply. “Boneheaded? Daft? Foolish? Ill-advised?”
“While all of those adjectives are in part appropriate,” Megs interjected primly before Sarah could continue her list—her friend’s vocabulary was quite extensive—“I think ill-advised might be the most applicable. I am so sorry for putting your life in danger.”
“And yours.”
Megs blinked. “What?”
Sarah leaned a little forward so that her face came into the carriage lantern’s light. Sarah usually had the sweet countenance of a gently reared maiden lady—which at five and twenty she was—belied only by a certain mocking humor lurking at the back of her soft brown eyes, but right now she might’ve been an Amazon warrior.
“Your life, Megs,” Sarah replied. “You risked not only my life and the lives of the servants, but your life as well. What could possibly be important enough to venture into St. Giles at this time of night?”
Megs looked away from her dearest friend. Sarah had come to live with her at the St. John estate in Cheshire nearly a year after Megs’s marriage to Godric, so Sarah didn’t know the real reason for their hasty nuptials.
Megs shook her head, gazing out the carriage window. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see …”
