“I didn’t order—” Violet’s heart stopped when the door swung fully open.
To the right of the proprietress stood a maid bearing the biscuits and chocolate. To the left, one pale hand swallowed by the proprietress’s larger one, stood Lily Waldegrave.
The proprietress raised her brows. “She says she belongs to you. Is that true?”
“Oh, dearLord.”
Violet sucked in a wheezing breath as her heart kicked back into motion. How in Hades? She fumbled in her pocket for her spare key. Missing. Wonderful.
Distract ’em, and you can nick anything.Isn’t that what she’d thoughtlessly told the girl? Her star pupil had been paying closer attention than Violet had ever dreamed. And she’d been plenty distracted when she’d given Lily a final kiss goodbye. She’d been terrified of never seeing her again. And now here she was. Of course she would look for Violet in the village’s only inn. Lily’s father would be furious.
“What in the bloody hell were you thinking?” Violet exploded. “Are you mad? Nicking a key and—”
The proprietress hissed and drew back. “Is that how you talk to your daughter?”
Violet choked off the rest of her tirade. “My—?”
“Mama,” Lily cried in a little baby voice. She broke free from the proprietress’s hold to throw her skinny arms around Violet’s waist. “Please don’t leave me again.”
Speechless with mortification, Violet slid a pained glance up at the proprietress.
“Isshefrom Waldegrave Abbey, too?” whispered the suitably nonplussed maid.
Lily lifted her face from Violet’s skirts and nodded. “We were locked up for ages. But now we ran away.”
“Shhh.” Uneasy, Violet swung her up and into the room before any further inappropriate confessions could be made. “Thank you for bringing the refreshments. Once Lily has rested a moment, we’ll be heading back to—”
“I can’t go anywhere.” Lily thumped down onto the floor. “My feet hurt.”
Violet spun around to discover her already tugging off her boots. Swollen blisters dotted both pale heels. Violet closed her eyes. Of course. Lily had been in one room her entire life. If her limbs weren’t accustomed to walking long distances, her feet would certainly not be accustomed to the prolonged chafing of tight shoes.
Violet turned back to the proprietress. “Is there a carriage we can rent?”
The proprietress looked startled at the question. “’Fraid not, mum. You’ve seen Shrewsbury. There ain’t enough of it to bother taking a carriage from one side to the other. Only carriage that passes through regular is the post.”
Violet glanced toward the window. Now that night had fallen, the streets were silent and empty. Of course there was no carriage. “Is there a message boy we could dispatch to the abbey, to ask Mr. Waldegrave to come posthaste in his?”
The proprietress shook her head. “Don’t believe he’s got a carriage.”
“That’s right,” the biscuit-maid put in as she placed her tray upon a small table. “When ’e was ’ere buying buttons the other day, ’e did come on foot.”
Violet exhaled slowly, and did her best to put aside for the moment the reminder that sun-shy Alistair occasionally escaped the abbey for a little town shopping. “Can you at least send him the message that his daughter is here at the inn?”
The maid’s eyes widened. “This ishisdaughter?”
“He has awife?”echoed the proprietress, thunderstruck.
“Oh, they’re not married,” Lily put in as she climbed atop the ancient bed. “She’s my governess. And my mama.”
Lovely.Violet tried to keep smiling through clenched teeth, but her fingers clenched the sides of her gown. The proprietress and her maid now stared at Violet in a wholly new light. This might not be the pinnacle of the miseries she’d suffered in her twenty-some-odd years, but it was rapidly becoming one of the most humiliating.
“Can someone please,please,dispatch the message?” she said with what little composure she had left. “Immediately?”
The maid nodded so enthusiastically that Violet had no doubt everyone in a fifty-mile radius would have the news before sunup.
“As you say, ma’am.” The proprietress held out her palm. “That’ll be sixpence for the missive, another for the refreshments, and one and six for the extra guest.”
Fully aware that she was being swindled blind precisely because she was in no position to haggle, Violet jerked her coin purse from her skirt pocket and placed the required half-crown onto the proprietress’s palm.
