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Lizzy May frowned and shook her head.
“No. I’m sure Roberts will report to us once whatever transpires is dealt with.”
Ellie tamped down her disappointment and listened, but couldn’t hear the butler. Nor was the French accented voice again raised.
She closed her book again. She must know. How or why Richard Carmichael’s French mistress would be at the Duke of Aspen’s country estate, Ellie could not fathom, but if that was who stood in the entrance hall, her presence must have to do with Samuel’s fate.
“I don’t care for this book one bit. I’ll select another. Can I bring you anything?”
Lizzy May marked her place again and looked up with another frown. Suspicion narrowed her gaze.
Ellie mustered a bland, innocent expression, daring her sister to order or question her. Lizzy May might be married, and a Duchess, but she was still Ellie’s twin sister. They were almost exactly the same age. Lizzy May had no right to manage Ellie.
“I’m happy with my choice, and what you could possibly find to dislike about Macbeth is beyond me.”
“Too many witches,” Ellie said sweetly as she rose.
Carrying the book, she strode from the room. Aware of Lizzy May’s gaze, Ellie turned left, away from the front hall, in the direction of the library. She walked for several paces, taking in how the runner muffled her steps. Satisfied, she set the heavy volume down on a nearby table beside a flower vase, took two handfuls of her skirt to hold it out of the way, and started running.
Ellie sped down the hall and around a corner, her goal another parlour. She found it as empty as she’d hoped and rushed across to the tall windows. Only knee height off the floor, they offered an easy climb out onto the lawn.
That lawn stretched green and manicured to the edge of the drive and, as she’d feared, revealed a carriage moving diagonally away from her, headed back to the lane. Hoisting her skirt higher, Ellie set off at a run.
She raced across the lawn, her slippers sliding, her hem held up to her knees. Her heart hammered as if it wanted free of her stays, as surely her lungs did. A stitch stabbed through her side. She squeezed her fistfuls of skirt tighter and kept running.
The horses moved at a walk, looking tired, and she gained on them steadily. She didn’t dare call out until she got close, afraid those in the house would hear her rather than those in the carriage. The driver, who looked idly about, spotted her and his mouth fell open in surprise. He slowed. A blonde head poked out the window, that French accented voice calling to him. The driver leaned over so his passenger could see him and pointed to Ellie.
Ellie barrelled up to the carriage door gasping, “Please. Let me in.”
A perfect oval face with brightly rouged lips and devastatingly blue eyes stared at her. “I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle?”
Trying to speak intelligibly through her gasps for air, Ellie said, “Please. I am Her Grace’s sister, and you must be Mr. Carmichael’s mistress,” and Ellie very much hoped she was correct about which Mr. Carmichael, “and I must speak with you, and I can’t let them see me from the house.” Assuming they hadn’t already. A glance back showed no alarms raised. No footmen running down the drive. Ellie swivelled back around to look at the French woman. “Please?”
Richard Carmichael’s mistress shrugged, pushed open the carriage door, and slid over.
Ellie pulled herself up and in to flop into the rear facing seat.
“Thank you. We should probably keep moving.”
“But moving where?” the woman asked. Her gaze narrowed. “I will not be accused of kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” Ellie shook her head. “I chased you down and demanded to be let in.”
The other woman shrugged again. “I am already known to be a traitor. Why not a kidnapper of young Englishwomen?”
Ellie stared, a bit daunted by how self-possessed the Frenchwoman was, hands folded elegantly over the voluminous cloak that shrouded her, leaving little to see but a long, elegant neck and her stunning face. Striving to emulate her, she said, “I’m Ellie Ellsworth, the Duchess’s sister, as I mentioned. The papers haven’t given your name.”
The French woman sniffed. “No. They prefer to call me anything but. Strumpet. Paramour. Courtesan. Amante. Femme fatale.”
Ellie didn’t know all of those words, but suspected none were complimentary.
“I’d rather address you by your name than any of those, if I may? Miss?”
“Mademoiselle Yvette Petit, but you may call me Yvette.”
“Thank you, ah, Yvette. May we please start moving again? Before anyone becomes suspicious? I promise, on my honour, I won’t say you kidnapped me.”
Mademoiselle Petit considered Ellie a moment long, then knocked on the roof. The carriage rolled forward.
