Page 73 of Lady Arabella’s Reluctant Hero

"Why would she lie?" Clarissa asked.

He suspected they all knew the answer, but it was left to John to say it aloud. "Something scared her badly enough that she decided to leave, and to lie to all of us about Edgmond and her father⁠—"

"To protect us," Clarissa finished quietly.

The room went still.

Yes. John nodded. The truth settled in his gut with a cold certainty. The only reason Arabella would leave Lucy behind without so much as a goodbye. The only reason she'd push him away with talk of marrying Lord Edgmond.

"She's trying to protect us," he said.

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew them to be the truth. The only possible truth.

John looked at his daughter, whose fists were still clenched and whose eyes were still bright with unshed tears.

"Stay with Aunt Clarissa." He was already heading toward the door. "Kit, will you see to things here? I don't know how long⁠—"

"Go," Kit said. "We'll manage."

"Papa." Lucy caught his hand as he passed. "Bring her back."

He nodded. "I will, sweetheart."

24

Arabella heard Thea's inhale over the rattling of the carriage wheels. "Don't say it."

She glanced over just in time to see Thea close her mouth. But her sigh said plenty.

The carriage rattled on. Fields slid past the window, green and gold and entirely indifferent to the fact that Arabella's dreams for her future had been shattered. Again.

Thea's silence lasted approximately two miles. "I only wish to point out⁠—"

"Thea."

"—that you did not have to handle it this way. There were other options. Rational options. Options that did not involve lying to a man who⁠—"

"It's done." Arabella kept her eyes on the window. If she looked at Thea, she would cry, and she had vowed to herself that she was finished crying. She'd done enough of it last night to last a lifetime.

At some point Lucy had knocked on her door and she'd had to lie there in the dark, holding her breath and stifling the sobs, pretending to sleep while Lucy stood on the other side of the door wanting to make sure she was all right.

She was not all right. But that was beside the point.

"It's done," she said again. Quieter this time.

She'd said it plenty since this painfully long ride to London first began.

Thea regarded her from across the carriage with an expression Arabella had come to recognize. It was the look of a woman performing a calculation. No doubt Thea was weighing the odds that further argument would be productive against the odds that Arabella would throw the travel rug at her head if she mentioned it again.

Thea retreated. For now.

Arabella was grateful. Not just for the silence, but for the fact that Thea was here at all. When she'd gone to Thea's room the day she'd first received the note, she'd told her everything. She hadn't actually meant to, at first, but there was something about Thea's reasonable response—the lack of emotion or judgment—that made it all too easy to confide.

And so she'd told her about the note, the threat to Lucy…and her plan to leave.

Thea had listened without interruption. Then she'd asked three questions, all of them practical, and said, "I'm coming with you."

Arabella had argued. Thea had ignored the argument with her customary efficiency. "You are leaving one way or the other," she'd said. "And I would rather be with you when you do something reckless than hear about it afterward in a letter."