Page 56 of Who’s That Earl

“I cannot wait.” For a moment, they all looked thoughtful. Then Thomas said, “This is mad, I know, but there’s a racing curricle at Dunnock. She’d go like the wind, if a man had horses.”

Ross sighed at the impossibility, but Theo only lifted his shoulders. “If that’s all, I reckon I can borrow a pair.”

“How?” the others demanded. “From whom?”

“Best no’ tae ask questions when ye dinna want the answer.”

Alarm surged in Thomas’s veins; he’d asked for help, for friendship, not for this. But Ross spoke first. “Theo Campbell, if ye get yerself hanged for horse thievin’ afore ye can make an honest woman o’ my sister, I’ll kill ye again myself.”

Theo’s answering laugh was somehow somber. “Then I’d best not get caught. Look for me at Dunnock’s north gate, just before dawn.”

Thomas gave a curt nod of understanding. “The curricle holds two,” he said, hardly daring to make another request.

“Theo wouldna want tae leave ’is ma alone,” Ross pointed out. “An’ the less tae connect him tae those ‘borrowed’ horses, the better.”

“Then you, Ross,” Thomas said, turning toward him. “Will you come with me? Help me find her?”

Disbelief sketched across his friend’s face. “Of course, ye great numpty.” Then he paused, a frown wrinkling his brow, as if contemplating a problem of some complexity. “If there’s room for but two in the carriage, how do you mean tae fetch her back?”

At that moment, Elspeth slipped by on her way to a table and brushed Ross lightly on the shoulder with her hand—not precisely to get his attention, Thomas realized, but simply to reassure him she was near, that she was his. And perhaps to remind him he was hers. Ross reached up and covered her work-reddened fingers with his, squeezed and released them, and Elspeth went on her way. Not a word nor a glance passed between the two of them. Just a momentary contact, almost unnoticeable, and yet the intimacy of it pierced Thomas.

If Jane was lost to him, he would never know its like again.

“I fear she’ll not be coming back to Dunnock.”

Theo and Ross exchanged a look. “Whatever you say, your lordship,” Ross said with a skeptical laugh, sketching a showy half bow with a flick of his wrist and a theatrical dip of his head. “But when she does, you’d best not ask me tae walk home.”

Chapter 21

Incredulous, Allora raised her chin and met her captor’s hazel eyes. “You mean you don’t know the source of the glowing light either?” she demanded. When he shook his head, the moonlight glossed his hair, and she found herself fighting the unanticipated temptation to curl her fingers in its dark waves.

Jane brushed the feathered tip of her quill across her lips. How was she going to explain the glowing light? Shouldn’t a writer of her experience have had that business sorted long before now?

And just when had the brigand begun to resemble Thomas?

Swallowing a groan, she crumpled the sheet into a ball and sent it to join a growing pile of similarly rejected pages on the floor near the hearth. Aphrodite’s ears perked up. An hour past, she had been ready to give chase, but this time she didn’t lift her head from her paws. Athena pretended not to notice at all.

Mr. Canfield had been most understanding about the delay, assuring her that he believed the book would be all the better for it. Jane, however, had her doubts.

Rather than waste more paper, she laid aside her pen and rose. Four swishing strides took her to the rear window, which overlooked what she’d been assured would be a lovely garden, come spring. Though the days were getting longer, it was still early enough in the year that the light was beginning to fade, though it was only just past four o’clock.

While deciding where to settle, she’d taken half of a little house on the edge of New Town, one room up and two down. A girl came in every morning to keep things tidy, and her landlady’s servant brought in two meals a day. The widowed landlady, Mrs. Rutherford, lived next door, in the other half of the house. She’d asked remarkably few questions of Jane and seemed inclined to let her go about her business, so long as she entertained no gentlemen and the rent was paid on time.

Four swishing strides took Jane back to the desk. It really was an ideal arrangement as far as her work was concerned. Though she’d originally intended to find somewhere remote, like the cottage she’d described to Thomas, Edinburgh allowed her to be perfectly anonymous. A few rooms in town were more than sufficient for her needs.

Only occasionally did she wish for a bit more compass for her imagination. It was difficult to work out a particularly thorny problem of plot in a room only half a thought wide. At times like these, a writer needed space to stretch both her legs and her mind. Such as...a cavernous hall so long it was difficult to see from one end to the other, or perhaps in finer weather, a grass-carpeted courtyard between the tall stone walls of an ancient castle.

With a sigh, she threw herself into her chair. She who prided herself on her self-sufficiency, in every sense of the word, missed Dunnock and Balisaig with an ache unlike any she had ever known. She missed Agnes and Esme and Mrs. Abernathy, the warm greetings at the pub, and the distant blare of Dougan’s pipes. Without intending to, without even trying, she’d built up a little community—a little family—around herself.

Years ago, she’d been forced to leave her home and family. She had vowed never to need such trappings of sentiment again. This time, however, she’d had a choice about leaving. Had she made the right one?

Most of all, she missed Thomas. Seven years ago, scrabbling for survival, she’d hardly had the luxury of pining for what they might have had. Doubtless he, sailing into dangers unknown, had felt the same. But now, she had entirely too much time to think.

As if she were a character in a Robin Ratliff novel, she raised a hand to lay her palm against her chest. From time to time, she fancied she felt a sort of twinge there. The pain of a heart that would never be solely hers again, for despite her best efforts, a piece of it had broken free and flown to him.

Still, beneath her hand, that organ beat with such steadiness and strength, one could almost imagine it was whole. Evidently, it was possible to go on living with such a wound.

Oh, if only there was some way of knowing how he fared. Whether he missed her. Whether he wanted her. Was he broken-hearted too? If she could see him, just once more, then she could look into his eyes and see the truth...