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“No. I can see that.” Ellie willed away the heat she felt building in her cheeks. “Could you escort me there, please? Preferably by a discreet route? Maybe the servants’ way?”
Behind the girl, more and more of the other kitchen staff paused in their work to stare. Ellie could only hope that none would recognise her well enough to spread gossip.
“Yes, Mum, to be sure I can. Right this way.” The girl, true to her word, led Ellie through several small, dimly lighted halls. They stopped finally at a door and the maid, adroitly, stuck her head through first, then stepped back. “No one’s looking, Mum,” she whispered. “This brings you in at the back, in the curtained area.”
Ellie looked at her, this slip of a kitchen maid in her flour dusted apron. She pulled free one of the decorative hairpins the Dowager had given her to add to her look as a married woman. “Please, take this, with my thanks.”
“I couldn’t, Mum.”
Ellie caught the girl’s hand and placed the pin in her palm, gently curling her fingers closed about it.
“I insist.”
“Thank you, Mum.”
With a last nod for the maid, Ellie slipped through the door.
She managed to adjust her gown and hair with no one sighting her, then strode into the grander portion of the ladies’ retiring room, nodding to those she passed. No one paid her undue attention, but she made certain to be seen. There’d be no one to say how long she’d been in that small haven women were permitted at a Ball.
The Dowager didn’t hide her displeasure over Ellie’s absence, so she devoted the remainder of the evening to appearing convivial and correct, and tried to ignore all the looks askance levelled her way. By the early hours of the morning, when the Dowager’s carriage left Ellie on the pavement before her sister’s London home, Ellie felt she’d been forgiven. She hurried up the steps to the front door, eager to reach her room and begin packing.
Ellie held her breath, the only way to keep in a squeal of glee, as she waited for the door to open. Packing. For Scotland. With Samuel!
The door swung open to reveal a sleepy footman, who bowed and backed inside. Normally, Ellie would hurry past to avoid too much scrutiny of her appearance, but as the sun was nearly up, she recalled the paper. Now was her best opportunity to remove any incriminating gossip pages.
Cloak pulled tight and hood up to hide attire and ornaments inappropriate to a young miss, she turned to the footman, who quickly stifled a yawn, and asked, “Is the morning paper here?”
“Only just, Miss.”
He gestured behind her.
Ellie turned, sighting the indicated hall table. She’d no hope of sleep, knowing that in mere hours she’d be on her way to Scotland with Samuel, but seeing to the paper would remove the only shadow that could threaten her joy, the idea of Lizzy May reading about Ellie’s exploits as a false Duchess. She strode to the table, hoping no one had written about her walk in the garden and she could leave the pages intact.
Lizzy May might not be feeling well, but she’d eventually notice if Ellie kept purloining pages from the paper.
Ellie took up the paper, noticed Samuel’s name on the first page, and gasped.
Chapter Ten
Bells rang out, marking the hour. Samuel pulled free his watch again, though how the fine Italian piece could show a different time than the church bells of London, he knew not. Eleven. Exactly as the bells tolled. He yanked the curtain wider and looked up and down the street. Ellie was nowhere to be seen. He’d been watching the street since ten. Perhaps she’d come even earlier, and gone into the Muses to wait? Maybe she’d found a book, and lost track of the time, and would even now appear through the door, the church bells alerting her to the hour.
He fixed his gaze on the front door of the Temple of the Muses.
A gentleman went in. Two matronly figures came out. Samuel pulled out his watch again.
He shoved it away. Could this be some form of retribution? Did she seek to make him suffer as she had, when he’d promised to arrive and hadn’t? She said she’d waited for nearly two hours. Would she consign him to exactly that fate?
He would wait, then. He disliked being punished like a child and they would need to discuss better means of reconciliation in the future, but if penance meant putting his transgression behind them, he would serve his penance.
Another hour passed. Still, Ellie didn’t appear. Samuel disembarked to stretch his legs and gain a better view of the street. Both horses and driver napped, the day one of the warmest yet, reminding them all that the time to depart London drew near.
Maybe he shouldn’t have pressed her to run away? Maybe, by morning’s light, she worried over his motives. If so, he must see her and explain. He loved her. He should have said as much. Then she would understand his haste.
And he’d explain about his dread. The looming feeling that something might come between them, created by Richard’s troubles. By rights, he should tell her all before they married. He’d meant to on the ride, but by then, of course, it would be too late. Not telling her before they left would be the coward’s way.
Trying to tamp down desperation and anger, Samuel walked down to the corner, then along Finsbury. He paced the street before the Muses. It couldn’t be an elaborate retribution, could it? The woman he’d met, the one he’d fallen in love with, was Ellie Ellsworth.
Not a scorned and, apparently, cruel Duchess already bored with wedded life? He conjured a vision of those wide, love-filled grey eyes. Those eyes hadn’t lied to him.
