“No, Mary, it’s not fair.”
“Going to your sister’s, then, are you?”
“Until I find another place.” Joan gave Margaret a little shove, and she lurched forward, tripping on the bottom step before starting up the outside stairs.
“Good-bye, Joan, and Godspeed.”
Margaret reached street level as Joan trotted up the stairs behind her.
“Let’s go,” the maid whispered, without a backward glance.
Margaret, however, looked over her shoulder several times as they crossed the square, fearing any moment the hovering footman or Sterling himself would appear behind them. But all was quiet save for the clicking of their bootheels and the distantclip-clop-clatterof horse hooves on cobblestones.
They had made it.
What now? She’d known only that she had to get out of Benton’s house that very night. In her panicked hurry she had not even left her mother a note. Even if she had, she knew very well Sterling would have read it. And lost no time in following any unintentional clues it held to find Margaret and drag her back. What would she have written at any rate? She didn’t know where she was going beyond Billingsgate. And Joan had made it clear this would only be a brief stay until she found other employment. Margaret hoped it would buy her enough time to figure out her next step. She would write to her mother then.
Ahead of her, Joan strode briskly on, and Margaret strained and panted to keep up. On the next street, a man leaning in a shadowed doorway leered at them. Two militiamen whistled as they passed. Margaret decided she did not like walking London streets at night. “Joan? Joan, wait!” Her voice shook. “How far did you say it was?”
Joan glanced over her shoulder. “Three or four miles, I’d reckon.”
Margaret swallowed. Perhaps she ought to risk going to Emily Lathrop’s house instead. It could be no more than a mile or two away.
She recalled the last time she had gone to the Lathrops’ in Red Lion Square. She had been vexed with Marcus and Sterling both, and hoped to beg an invitation to stay with Emily for a time. But she had not been in the Lathrops’ drawing room an hour when she heard Sterling Benton’s name announced and had to sit there while he lamented that her mother had taken ill and needed her at home.
It had all been a ruse. Her mother was in perfect health, although she had been “sick with worry,” and quite put out with Margaret for leaving the house alone—though she had never minded when Margaret spent time with friends before.
At the end of the block, Joan waited for a post chaise to pass, allowing Margaret to catch up with her. “Do you know where Red Lion Square is?”
Joan looked wary. “Yes. My cousin has a post near there. Why?”
“Could you please walk there with me? My friend Emily lives there, and perhaps she might help me.”
Joan shrugged an apathetic reply. “I suppose. ’Tisn’t far out of my way.”
Margaret was surprised she agreed so readily. Joan was apparently eager to be rid of her.
As she trudged behind Joan along busy Oxford Street, Margaret rehearsed how to explain her predicament to Emily, mortifying though it was. Emily would be happy to have her, once she quit laughing over her costume. But could she talk her parents into allowing her to stay? They were unlikely to believe her word over Sterling Benton’s. Sterling could be so convincing, so persuasive. He would have them believing his nephew the soul of propriety and her a deluded ninny with an overinflated view of her “irresistible” charms. Mr. Lathrop would gently admonish her to be sensible and send her home with Sterling without a second thought.
She shuddered. Perhaps instead of asking to stay, she would ask Emily to loan her enough money to see her out of town and somewhere safe. Margaret would pay her back with interest as soon as she received her inheritance. She loathed the thought of borrowing money from friends. But she would have to set aside her pride. Pulling the mobcap down more snugly over her black wig and spectacles, she realized she already had.
They walked north and then turned into quiet and pretty Red Lion Square. There, Margaret led the way across the square’s central garden. She paused behind one of the trees to survey the Lathrop town house across the street. Joan stood behind her. All was still, save for the flicking tail of a horse harnessed to a carriage waiting several houses away.
Margaret was about to cross the cobbles when she realized with a start that she recognized the landau with its brass candle lamps, as well as the coachman at the reins. Margaret retreated behind the tree once more. As she peered around it, the Lathrops’ front door opened and Sterling Benton appeared, framed by lamplight at its threshold, speaking in earnest confidence with Emily’s father. Sterling shook his head somberly, appearing the perfect image of concerned stepfather. Mr. Lathrop nodded and the two men shook hands.
Sterling had certainly gotten there quickly. She and Joan had left perhaps only thirty or forty minutes before. Of course they had walked, while Sterling had a horse and carriage at his disposal. He—or Marcus, more likely—must have come to her room soon after she’d left and discovered her gone. Thank heaven she left when she did.
Clattering horse hooves galloped into the square, and Margaret peered around the other side of the tree. A man in a chimney-pot hat and cropped coat rode up, quickly dismounted, and tied his reins to a post. The man’s hurry sounded an alarm in Margaret’s mind. Was this the man from Bow Street Murdoch had announced before Margaret left? Had Sterling planned to hire a watchman but now commissioned the same man to find and apprehend her?
The newcomer trotted up the walkway toward Sterling and Mr. Lathrop. There on the stoop, the three men spoke, Sterling gesturing and frowning. He pulled something from his pocket and handed it to the officious-looking man. She could not see the object clearly from that distance, but based on the way the man studied it, she guessed it might be a framed miniature portrait. The one commissioned by her father for her eighteenth birthday?
Evidently, Sterling had arranged for the runner to meet him at the place he expected to find Margaret. Where hewouldhave found her had she arrived even five minutes earlier. Sterling Benton knew her better than she realized, and that thought riddled her with anxiety. Where could she go, where could she hide, where Sterling Benton would never think to look forher?
A few minutes later, Sterling departed in the carriage and Mr. Lathrop retreated inside, yet the runner remained, leaning against the outside stair rail.
“Well?” Joan whispered.
“The watchman, or whatever he is, is making himself comfortable. I don’t think he is going anywhere soon.”
