“Why not?” He couldn’t understand this. It was not like Penn to be irrational.
“I truly dunno, sir.”
“And why are you still here? Did you not travel here with her?”
“I did, sir. But she told me to stay and help with the work. She knows my sister is the downstairs maid for Lady Marsden. We could have our Christmas together, she said.”
He ran a hand across his mouth. “How would she travel on Christmas day?” he asked himself more than the maid.
“She asked Simms to get her a hired coach from the town.”
“When did it arrive?”
“Minutes ago.”
“So. If you were to wager, would you say she went home to London?”
“That I would, sir. London is the only home she has, sir.”
“Bugger!”
“Sir?”
Oh, hell.“My apologies.”
He was getting as loose-tongued as the lady he loved!
Chapter 8
The most likely road to London from Brighton was the Lewes road. Theo took it through the windy snowstorm, his hat pulled tight, his great coat drawn close about him in the blasted weather. The horse he’d bribed the Countess’s groomsman to lend him was a sound bit of horseflesh. He pushed the animal to continue, though the creature must have cursed his rider’s persistence and his foul language, too. Theo loved horses and he should have been ashamed to expose the stalwart stallion to the vagaries of the storm—and his own wild urgency, but he had no choices. Penn had fled him and their argument. He would find a way to apologize and move their relationship forward.
If she accepted him, wonderful.
If not, he had other objectives.
But he rode onward, smiling that the one element that conspired with him was the horrendous snowstorm.
Not far up the road, he detected the next town. Village it was. He’d ridden through it in his coach to the Countess’s party. Preston Barracks was home to a cavalry regiment. That he had known somehow, most likely from newspapers. The village boasted a fine confectionary, a stables and blacksmith, and an inn. The wooden sign above the inn’s doorway swung to and fro in the wind. The Royal Swan, with its sturdy stone walls and voluminous smoke billowing from the chimney, promised warmth at the least. Theo handed over the reins to the boy outside. With a handful of coins and instructions to take him to the stables, he asked that the horse be brushed down and well fed. For the courtesy of the coins, the boy also shared the news that the hired traveling coach from Brighton was stopped at the stables.
“He wants to return home for his Christmas supper,” the boy said.
“Does he?” Theo dug in his saddlebag for more coin. “Give him this, with the Marquess of Tain’s compliments. And tell him he should go home now before night falls.”
“But the lady who hired him will be in need of him.”
“The lady will be safely carried home to London by me. When the storm clears.”
The boy nodded.
Would that Theo was not lying to him. Or to the Brighton hack.
The innkeeper was less cooperative.
“I know a lady arrived by hired coach, sir.” Theo was in no mood to argue with the burly little man.
“She wishes no company, milord.”
“I guarantee you, she will wish mine.” He gave the keep the hauteur that always moved a man to grant Theo what he wanted. “She is my friend.”
