Page 54 of The Lady’s Deception

“Walk toward our carriage,” he ordered them, his voice low. “Do not dally, but do not seem to hurry, either. Draw no attention.”

They were almost past Setterby’s carriage when Eileen, who’d grown larger and stronger in the course of a week, managed to squirm free of Bell’s stranglehold and darted away. His heart stuttered, but he nudged his youngest sister forward. Rescuing the kitten could mean losing Rosamund. “For Miss Gorse’s sake,” he whispered, “we must go on.” Tears sprang to Bell’s eyes and her lower lip wobbled, but she clamped it between her teeth and gave one quick nod. Brave, Rosamund had called her. How had he never realized it himself?

Just before Eileen scampered beneath the terrible hooves of Setterby’s beasts, the coachman reached out a hand and snatched her up. “Wot’s this?” The burly man looked about him; there was no escaping his gaze. How long before he realized he was staring right at the very party of four he sought: a fair-haired Englishwoman, a dark-haired Irishman, and two young girls?

But the man showed no sign of interest, no suspicion. Was it possible? Had neither Setterby nor Dashfort described to his coachman the people they trailed? “Yourn?” the man asked, holding out Eileen. The tiny kitten was nearly lost in the man’s enormous hand.

Paris gave the other three a gentle push toward their carriage and turned back. “Yes, thank you.” Just to be safe, he swallowed his pride and erased every trace of Dublin from his voice, speaking the King’s English as if he’d been born to it. “My daughter”—after all, they’d passed as a married couple with children before on this trip—“would have been devastated to lose her.”

“I got a girl, meself. Hate to see ’er cry.” The coachman chuckled and handed over the little troublemaker. “Some cats is right skittish around ’osses. Tell your little one she’d best get a bit o’ string if’n she means t’ keep ’er.”

“I’ll do that, sirrah. Thank you.” With his free hand, Paris touched the brim of his hat, turned, and walked calmly to his waiting coach. Five strides, three, two…

With a nod to his driver, he swung into the carriage, and the wheels were rolling before he had collapsed onto the forward-facing seat beside Rosamund. Both Bell and Daphne had tears streaming down their faces as they took the kitten from him, fussing over her and petting her and scolding her.

Rosamund, however, made not a sound. If she wept, she did so silently. Her face was turned toward the window as she watched the road behind them, her spine so rigid he knew instinctively that if he dared to touch her now, she would simply snap in two. If she weren’t already broken.

Could he get her to safety in time? Or was it already too late?

Chapter 19

When they reached the outskirts of London, Rosamund allowed herself to turn away from the window and slide back on the seat. No point in looking behind her when the road was clogged with coaches of every variety and horses beyond number. Any one of them might have been conveying Charles in his relentless pursuit.

Still, she held every muscle clenched to the point of pain, afraid of collapsing in a shuddering, sobbing heap. She’d let herself imagine, for a few hours, a few days at most, that her brother had given up. He didn’t really care what became of her after all. She’d never forget his chilling words to Lord Dashfort: Rosamund will be yours to deal with. However you see fit.

All those years, she’d been nothing to him. Nothing more than a means to an end.

But it was the end that mattered to Charles. And for that very reason she had known, deep down, that he wouldn’t let her escape.

Although Paris going to Kilready had made it easier to trace her first to Dublin, then to England, and now to London, it had been by no means impossible before. The metropolis might have promised some anonymity, but Paris’s family was her only security now, and they had not exactly lived shy, retiring lives. Even Rosamund, living in near total isolation in Berkshire, had heard of his famous sister, the novelist, and her notorious husband, whose home they were soon to reach. It might take Charles another day to uncover the connection between Paris Burke and Lady Ashborough. No more. What then?

Despite her best efforts, a shudder escaped at last, rattling through her shoulders, down her spine, along every limb. Thanks to the heavier traffic, the carriage happened not to be in motion at that moment, so there was no disguising it as another of the endless jostles and jolts of travel, wood and iron wheels over rutted roads or unforgiving bricks. She gripped the edge of the seat to keep herself from sliding onto the floor as the tremor passed out of her body, like lightning striking the ground.

No one saw. Bell and Daphne were looking out opposite windows in open-mouthed awe punctuated by occasional squeals of astonishment or delight. Even Eileen stood watching with her paws on the window frame, her basket prison once more abandoned.

Paris too kept his gaze fixed on some point beyond the glass, though his posture was that of a man whose thoughts were far away. He showed no sign of having felt Rosamund’s jerky movement, though it had surely shaken the bench they shared. The cushions of even the most well-appointed carriages were never as plush after several days as they seemed at first.

Then his hand, which had been lying on the seat between them, moved. Slowly, he crossed the inches between them—a journey somehow longer and more perilous than the one they had just undertaken—and covered her gloved fingers with the gentle pressure of his own.

Daphne, having turned in response to her sister’s command to observe something marvelous out the opposite window, watched it happen. Rosamund expected an exclamation, a tart remark. The girl’s lips curved, but to Rosamund’s surprise, their expression was neither sly nor cynical. It was pleasure that turned up her lips. Happiness. And oh, yes, just a hint of triumph.

Another shiver was building, somewhere in the vicinity of Rosamund’s ribcage. Her heart, perhaps, though she refused to think in such nonsensical terms. Hearts beat, fast or slow. They did not ache, neither with joy nor sorrow. They certainly did not quiver with anticipation, with awareness that in a moment, something had changed.

She wanted to linger on the edge of that sensation, to hold onto it, fearful that any movement might cause the fragile connection between them to collapse. But once she’d given in to her body’s determination to tremble—with fear, and with something that, inexplicably, wasn’t fear at all—she seemed to have lost all control. Again, the tremor passed through her, along her arm and into her hand.

Paris tightened his grip. “We’re coming into Mayfair now. Not much farther to Finch House.”

Without craning her neck or shifting her position, she could watch the scenery outside the windows change. The houses grew larger, the streets wider and quieter. She might now, if she looked, be able to sort out one carriage from the next, to determine how closely Charles followed. Only Paris’s touch kept her from moving, from torturing herself.

“Cami lives here?” Bell’s question held a mixture of awe and worry. She stroked Eileen’s fur with vigor, like a mother cat trying to make her baby look respectable. The kitten tolerated the attention for a few moments before crouching and springing with a wobble from Bell’s lap to Paris’s, her favored spot. The slightest grimace flickered across his face as her claws sank through his woolen breeches.

“Yes,” he said as the carriage rolled to a stop on one of the tree-lined streets of Grosvenor Square. “Just here.”

Liveried footmen came down the steps of the townhouse to help them from the carriage. Unceremoniously, Paris plucked Eileen from his leg with his free hand and nodded for Daphne to open to the basket. Once the kitten had been secured, he opened the door and stepped down to help Rosamund out, all without releasing her hand, his touch light but still a source of strength.

Her feet on the ground, she scanned the street. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw a man, not in livery, perhaps not even a servant, approach the carriage to speak to the driver. Instinctively, she sought to raise the alarm, but Paris handed her off to a footman before she could speak.

Realizing that to linger in the open might be dangerous if Charles were in fact close behind them, she hurried toward the stairs instead. The house itself was five stories tall and nearly as wide—to call it imposing would hardly do it justice. The home of one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in England. Surely even Charles might quail a bit at the thought of knocking at its front door, to say nothing of attempting to enter uninvited.